New Delhi: It is a question of “days”, if not a few “weeks”, before the Chagos archipelago is handed over to Mauritius, said Dhananjay Ritish Ramful, Mauritian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Cooperation in an exclusive interview with ThePrint Saturday.
“Right now, we are in the middle of a negotiation with the British for the handing over of Chagos Island to Mauritius. It’s a question of days… it’s a question of weeks… it’s a question of ratification because we have already signed a deal with the British, and that deal needs to be ratified,” Ramful said.
The issue surrounding the future of Chagos comes after US President Donald Trump criticised the deal signed between the UK and Mauritius to handover the sovereignty of the archipelago to Port Louis.
Trump labelled the deal as an act of “great stupidity” as it houses the Diego Garcia base, which is of strategic importance to the US. In 2025, London and Port Louis had agreed to hand over the archipelago to Mauritian control, with Diego Garcia to be retained by the UK in a 99-year lease.
Ramful was not certain if the Diego Garcia base has been used in the current conflict between Iran and US-Israel. It has, however, been used in the past for strikes against the Houthis in Yemen in 2024, as well as humanitarian aid deployments to Gaza.
The Mauritian foreign minister called on countries in the Indian Ocean to collaborate together and find solutions on maritime security amid the ongoing conflict in West Asia. The US sunk an Iranian ship, the IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean earlier this week. The ship was returning from India, after participating in the International Fleet Review in Visakhapatnam.
“Well this shows how vulnerable our oceans are, and this is why I said that it’s important that countries in the region should try to collaborate and find solutions, and come up with projects on maritime security. With India taking the chairmanship of the IORA (Indian Ocean Rim Association), I think this is going to be an important step where we can get… you know, where India can share the technologies, the know-how in maritime security to make this place more secure,” said Ramful, when asked about the IRIS Dena incident.
The Chagos archipelago is about 1,600 kilometres from the Indian subcontinent, and has strategic value in the vastness of the Indian Ocean. Its six main atolls have around 600 islands.
In the 1960s, the UK had forcibly displaced around 2,000 Chagossians, and later bifurcated the island chain in 1965 from its then colony of Mauritius, before Port Louis had gained independence from London in 1968.
As a part of the 2025 deal, the UK will pay Mauritius 101 million pounds a year, or roughly 3.4 billion pounds over the next 99 years to maintain control over Diego Garcia. Trump had supported the deal in February last year.
India has supported the deal, repeatedly backing Mauritius’s claims over the archipelago. It had aided Port Louis in its negotiations with London.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice had issued a non-binding advisory opinion that the UK must give up the island chain to Mauritius.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)