David Lammy is to make a last-ditch attempt to persuade Donald Trump’s new administration to back Labour’s planned giveaway of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
The Foreign Secretary will travel to meet his new counterpart, Marco Rubio, this month to address the United States’ fears about Mauritius’s close relationship with China.
Many of those close to the new president are understood to have major reservations about Labour’s controversial plans for the overseas British territory, a stark policy change after Joe Biden’s backing.
Mr Lammy and Mr Rubio will meet at the Munich Security Conference in a fortnight, their first face-to-face meeting.
On Friday, Sir Keir Starmer told the Mauritian PM that any deal must not further China’s “malign influence”.
However, Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel said Labour was “wrong to surrender our own territory and jeopardise our trans-Atlantic relationship”.
She demanded: “Starmer must scrap his disastrous deal now.”
Mr Lammy faces an uphill battle to persuade Mr Rubio, with the US Secretary of State already opposing the giveaway.
Prior to his nomination, Mr Rubio warned that the Mauritius deal “poses a serious threat to our national security interests in the Indian Ocean and threatens critical US military posture in the region”.
He added it “would provide an opportunity for communist China to gain valuable intelligence on our naval support facility in Mauritius”.
The archipelago in the Indian Ocean includes Diego Garcia, a strategic US military base, which Britain is now offering to lease back from Mauritius for 100 years for £9billion.
Last week, Republican senator John Kennedy warned Sir Keir: “Friends don’t strike deals behind each other’s backs, especially when our shared security is on the line.”
Describing Diego García as “among the UK’s most important military assets”, Mr Kennedy warned: “The Chinese Communist Party would love nothing more than for the security of Diego Garcia to fall into weaker hands.
“The UK was under some pressure from the Biden administration and the far-Left activists at the United Nations to relinquish control of the Chagos Islands, but there is no clear reason why ceding the territory is a prudent response to this campaign.
“Chagossians and Mauritians are practically strangers. They share almost no pre-colonial ties to one another, and they are separated by more than 1,200 miles of water. London is closer to Rome than Mauritius is to Diego Garcia.
“Chagossians consider themselves an indigenous people. Members of the Chagossian diaspora have repeatedly expressed their opposition to the deal – and I don’t blame them. The Mauritian government may not even allow Chagossians to visit the islands.
“The idea that the UK must hand over the islands to atone for whatever perceived wrongs Britain’s forefathers may have committed is nonsense.
“The UN does not care about what is best for the Chagossian, British or American people. They only care about furthering a misguided anti-Western agenda.”