Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam has questioned the duration of the lease on a U.S.-British military base, he told a local newspaper, a contentious element of\u00a0negotiations\u00a0in which the UK plans to cede control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.<\/p>\n
Britain struck a deal in October to hand over the Chagos Islands while retaining control of the base on Diego Garcia, the largest island of the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, under a 99-year lease. The agreement has not yet been ratified.<\/p>\n
Having ousted the former government in a November election, Ramgoolam criticised the deal, without going into details on the individual sticking points.<\/p>\n
Describing Britain’s agreement with the former government as a “sell out”, Ramgoolam told the local L’Express newspaper the lease should also be indexed to inflation and take exchange rates into account.<\/p>\n
It should fully recognise Mauritius’ ownership of the islands, he added, which could affect the UK’s unilateral right to renew the lease.<\/p>\n
“It is not only a question of money, but of our sovereignty,” he said, adding that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had been keen to conclude the agreement before President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.<\/p>\n
Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick as secretary of state, has said the deal poses a threat to U.S. security by ceding the archipelago – with its base used by U.S. long-range bombers and warships – to a country he claims is allied with China.<\/p>\n
“We are not in a hurry,” Ramgoolam said. “We remain constant in our claims and will make sure that the medium and long-term interests of the country are being looked into and not only the short term.”<\/p>\n
Some Chagossians have also criticised the negotiations, saying they cannot endorse an agreement they were not involved in and have said they will protest against it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam has questioned the duration of the lease on a U.S.-British military base, he told a local newspaper, a contentious element of\u00a0negotiations\u00a0in which the UK plans to cede control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Britain struck a deal in October to hand over the Chagos Islands while retaining control of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":10,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33],"tags":[3529,293,3459],"class_list":["post-14925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-chagos-islands","tag-mauritius","tag-navin-ramgoolam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}