When the governments of Mauritius and the United Kingdom issued a joint declaration at the beginning of this month that they had “reached an historic political agreement on the exercise of sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago” after a half-a-century long dispute and two years of direct negotiations, Joe Biden reportedly went “so far as to ‘applaud’ [the agreement] within minutes of the announcement!”

The United States president has every reason to be pleased.

After all, according to this much-lauded agreement, British rule over the Archipelago’s 60 or so small and uninhabited islands will come to an end, but there will be no change in the status of its main and most southerly isle, Diego Garcia, which is hosting a vast, secretive US Navy base.

As part of the agreement, Mauritius, which gained independence from Britain in 1968 after abandoning its claim to sovereignty over the Chagos, agreed that it would allow the US base to continue operating on Diego Garcia for the next 99 years – renewable. Under the deal, Chagossians, who were exiled from the archipelago in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for the US base, are allowed to return to the smaller Chagos islands – but they are still not permitted to access Diego Garcia freely or resettle there.

While the deal will not satisfy the United Nations, which has long been calling for the “complete” decolonisation of the Archipelago, or Chagossians, who wanted to “return home” without any conditions or exclusions, the White House is understandably relieved that an agreement has been reached between the UK and Mauritius that allows the US to keep the military facility it........

© Al Jazeera