Mauritius’ Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam has described as “positive” U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments that signalled Washington would likely back a deal over the future of a U.S.-UK military base in the Chagos Islands.<\/p>\n
Britain struck the agreement in October to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while retaining control under a 99-year lease of the military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island of the archipelago in the Indian Ocean.<\/p>\n
The deal, yet to be finalised with a formal treaty, had the backing of former U.S. President Joe Biden but has been mired in uncertainty since Trump’s re-election, with Ramgoolam, who was elected in November, also raising questions about it.<\/p>\n
Trump indicated his likely backing for the deal while meeting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“It looks positive. But we will wait and see what are the final proposals,” Ramgoolam told L\u2019Hebdo, a weekly newspaper published on Sunday, referring to Trump’s comments on the deal.<\/p>\n
Trump told reporters he would discuss the agreement with Starmer but that he was hopeful “it’s going to work out very well.”<\/p>\n
“I think we’ll be inclined to go along with your country,” he told Starmer.<\/p>\n
Britain had said it would give the Trump administration a chance to review the deal before finalising it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mauritius’ Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam has described as “positive” U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments that signalled Washington would likely back a deal over the future of a U.S.-UK military base in the Chagos Islands. Britain struck the agreement in October to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while retaining control under a 99-year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"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":[1643,293,3459],"class_list":["post-15445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-donald-trump","tag-mauritius","tag-navin-ramgoolam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15445","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=15445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15445\/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=15445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}