LONDON: Britain will rework its deal to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a minister confirmed on Wednesday, after US President Donald Trump branded the agreement ‘terrible’ during his first meeting with UK leader Andy Burnham.
London’s decision to hand back the Indian Ocean archipelago to its former colony and pay to lease a strategic US-UK military base on Diego Garcia has been a bone of contention with Trump’s administration for months.
The UK confirmed in April that it was pausing the plans agreed last year between the Mauritian government and Britain’s then-prime minister Keir Starmer. It faced vocal opposition from Trump,who had initially supported the pact, but then later branded it ‘an act of great stupidity’.
The unpredictable American leader railed against the deal again on Tuesday in his first faceto-face meeting with Burnham, who replaced Starmer in July.
Meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Trump said he believed Burnham would be reconsidering the ‘terrible deal’, as the UK leader sat beside him, nodded and said ‘yep’.
Burnham later told broadcasters Britain would ‘workhard’ tofind a resolution on the thorny issue and that he was ‘confident we can find it working with our US partners’.-AFP