Trump says UK's Starmer making 'a big mistake' with Chagos Islands deal

Trump says UK's Starmer making'a big mistake' with Chagos Islands deal Donald Trump has criticised the United Kingdom's plan to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a day after the United States Department of State gave its official approval of the deal. The US president said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Keir Starmer was "making a big mistake" in the agreement to return sovereignty of the archipelago to Mauritius, and lease back the island of Diego Garcia, which is home to a UK-US military base. The Indian Ocean archipelago became part of British territory in 1814, with the UK detaching it from Mauritius before it gained independence in the 1960s. It then worked with the US to force the islands' residents to leave, in order to build a military base on Diego Garcia, which it had leased to the US. Mauritius won its legal battle for sovereignty over the islands in 2019, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) urged the UK to cede control.