LONDON: Britain indicated on Saturday (Apr 11) it is shelving plans to return the Chagos Islands - which hosts the strategic Diego Garcia US-UK military base - to Mauritius, after United States President Donald Trump strongly criticised the deal.

Britain struck a deal with Mauritius last year to hand back the Indian Ocean islands to its former colony and pay to lease Diego Garcia, the largest island, home to the military base, for a century.

Trump condemned the return agreement as "an act of great stupidity" and, on Saturday, British media reported that Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government would drop legislation needed to put the deal into effect.

A former top government official said London had been effectively forced to abandon the plan as a result of Trump's opposition.

"When the president of the US is openly hostile, the government has to rethink, so this agreement ... will go into the deep freeze for the time being," Simon McDonald, previously the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, told BBC radio.

Downing Street said in a statement: "We have always said we would only proceed with the deal if it has US support."

Starmer's office issued the statement in response to reports that legislation underpinning the deal to return the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius was due to run out of time in parliament and that no new Chagos Bill would be brought forward.

The Mauritian foreign minister, Dhananjay Ramful, vowed on Saturday to reclaim the islands, which lie some 2,000km northeast of Mauritius.

"We will spare no effort to seize any diplomatic or legal avenue to complete the decolonisation process in this part of the Indian Ocean," Ramful said at an Indian Ocean Conference.

"This is a matter of justice."

"DEEPLY FRUSTRATING"

The UK had still not received a formal exchange of notes from Washington – a technical step but a legal necessity for the treaty to be enacted, Britain's PA news agency reported.

Time has consequently run out to pass the legislation before parliament is dissolved in the coming weeks, it said, quoting a government source as saying the situation was "deeply frustrating".

Main opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the agreement should now find its "rightful place - on the ash heap of history”.

“That it took so long is another damning indictment of a prime minister who fought to hand over Briti...