{"id":525368,"date":"2026-04-11T15:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/525368\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T15:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:23:07","slug":"uk-puts-diego-garcia-handover-on-hold-to-appease-trump-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/525368\/","title":{"rendered":"UK puts Diego Garcia handover on hold to appease Trump \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. president has changed his mind multiple times on the issue. But in February, Trump warned Starmer that he was \u201cmaking a big mistake\u201d in giving over the island. \u201cThis land should not be taken away from the U.K. and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally,\u201d Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/116093101641103750\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">said<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The British government earlier this week acknowledged that it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c04x1lg1lygo\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c04x1lg1lygo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">running out of time<\/a> to pass the legislation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe continue to believe the agreement is the best way to protect the long-term future of the base, but we have always said we would only proceed with the deal if it has U.S. support,\u201d a U.K. government spokesperson said Saturday, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/apr\/11\/uk-forced-to-shelve-legislation-to-return-chagos-islands-to-mauritius\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The agreement was meant to avoid a potentially painful and expensive legal dispute with Mauritius over the former colony. Indeed, after Trump\u2019s intervention last month, Mauritius said that it was exploring <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/us-donald-trump-chagos-opposition-leaves-britain-facing-new-legal-threat\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">legal tools<\/a> against London.<\/p>\n<p>Toby Noskwith, a spokesperson for campaign group Indigenous Chagossian People, told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/uk\/uk-pauses-its-plan-cede-chagos-islands-after-us-opposition-2026-04-11\/?taid=69da3ffd50dfba0001005fdf&amp;utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&amp;utm_medium=trueAnthem&amp;utm_source=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Reuters<\/a> that questions needed to be asked about \u201cthe enormous sums of money which have been wasted on a collapsed negotiation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The decision to put the agreement on hold follows increasing tensions over the military cooperation between Britain and the U.S. Starmer refused to support the American-Israeli attacks on Iran, and he allowed Washington to use U.K. military bases only for defensive strikes.<\/p>\n<p>During the \u00a0Middle East conflict, Iran <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/21\/iran-reportedly-fires-missiles-towards-uk-us-base-on-diego-garcia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">targeted<\/a> the Diego Garcia base, firing two ballistic missiles unsuccessfully at the Indian Ocean islands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. president has changed his mind multiple times on the issue. But in February, Trump warned Starmer&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[98826,5704,817,140,141,87218,59,57,58,585,420,36027,3714,632,151,152,105446,3105,2363,50,56,54,158,55,636,163220],"class_list":{"0":"post-525368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-air-defense","9":"tag-conflict","10":"tag-cooperation","11":"tag-defense","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-european-defense","14":"tag-gb","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-greatbritain","17":"tag-iran","18":"tag-keir-starmer","19":"tag-mauritius","20":"tag-media","21":"tag-middle-east","22":"tag-military","23":"tag-missiles","24":"tag-multinational-defense-programs","25":"tag-nato","26":"tag-negotiations","27":"tag-news","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-unitedkingdom","32":"tag-war","33":"tag-war-in-iran"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}