Regardless of calling it earlier an ‘act of nice stupidity’, Trump alerts assist of Starmer’s Chagos deal.
Revealed On 5 Feb 2026
United States President Donald Trump seems to have endorsed the deal struck by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at hand over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, weeks after calling it a “nice stupidity”.
Trump had final month described the UK’s resolution to cede sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago, which features a joint US-UK army base on the island of Diego Garcia, as an “act of nice stupidity”.
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The US president stated he held productive talks with Starmer on Thursday and that the UK chief had made the “greatest deal he may make”.
However he additionally warned in a publish on Fact Social that the US would retain the fitting to “militarily safe and reinforce” the US presence on the island of Diego Garcia if it had been threatened.
The British authorities stated in a press release that “the leaders agreed their governments would proceed working carefully to ensure the longer term operation of the bottom and converse once more quickly”, the AFP information company reported.
Beneath a deal agreed final Could, the governments of the UK and Mauritius collectively introduced that full sovereignty of the Chagos, a distant group of greater than 60 islands, would once more belong to Mauritius in change for ensures that the US army base may proceed working there for the subsequent 99 years.
Final yr’s announcement stirred a spread of feelings among the many Chagossians, who had been compelled from their island dwelling within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies and resettled in Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK. For many years, they’ve campaigned to return to their ancestral lands freely, with none restrictions.
The Chagos Islands have been below British management since 1814. Within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, Britain forcibly evicted practically 2,000 locals to make approach for the US army base, which performed a pivotal function in US army operations in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2008, the US additionally acknowledged that the bottom had been used for covert rendition flights of “terrorism” suspects.
