Elizabeth Piper
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he tends to support the future of a U.S. British military base in the Shagos Islands to promote the future of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump said he had met Starmer’s first face-to-face negotiations at the White House since Republican leaders’ policy on many areas of U.S. trade from Ukraine to global trade, expressing his support for the deal.
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Britain reached the agreement in October to ced the Chagos Islands sovereignty to Mauritius, while retaining control of the military base of Diego Garcia, the largest archipelago in the Indian Ocean, with a 99-year military base.
The deal has not been completed through a formal treaty and has been supported by former U.S. President Joe Biden, but the deal has fallen into uncertainty since Trump’s re-election. The UK has said it will give the Trump administration a chance to review the deal before finalizing it.
Trump sat next to Starmer in the Oval Office and told reporters that the two leaders will discuss the deal at a meeting Thursday, but he will likely accept it.
“We’ll have some discussion on this soon, and I think it’ll be good,” Trump said in his answer to a question about the deal.
“I think we tend to go with your country,” he told Starmer. “It’s still a little earlier, we have to get the details, but it doesn’t sound bad.”
Trump’s remarks will be welcomed by Starmer, who faces political pressure due to transaction costs and losses to the islands of Britain’s sovereignty.
In recent weeks, the new Prime Minister of Mauritius has questioned details of the deal, while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised concerns about China’s influence in the region, a deal that has further uncertainty in recent weeks.
When Mauritius was independent of Britain in the 1960s, London retained control of the Chagos Islands and forcibly displaced up to 2,000 people, making room for the Diego Garcia Base.
(Reported by Elizabeth Piper; Written by Sachin Ravikumar; Edited by Leslie Adler)
