Muizzu asks Burnham to reopen talks on Chagos instead of a handover to Mauritius

Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu wrote to British Prime Minister Andrew Burnham on Tuesday asking London to open talks with Malé on the sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago rather than proceed with a transfer to Mauritius. The president's office said Muizzu had told Burnham he was “deeply disappointed” that the Maldives was not consulted when the previous British government agreed to cede the islands, and asked him to “rectify this oversight by your predecessor.”

The letter lands on a deal that is already stalled. In May 2025 Britain signed an agreement with Mauritius to transfer sovereignty over Chagos while keeping the joint U.S.-British base on Diego Garcia under a long-term lease, at an average cost reported at about £101 million a year. President Donald Trump called the pact “a big mistake.” In April 2026 the British government set the implementing bill aside after that opposition. Mauritius has said it will keep pressing for the islands.

Distance, maps and a claim London did not hear

Muizzu's case is geographic and historical. Chagos sits about 500 kilometres from Malé, or about 280 nautical miles. Port Louis, the Mauritian capital, is more than 2,000 kilometres away. The Maldives government says a sixteenth-century map linked to King Hassan IX and graves with Dhivehi inscriptions show an older Maldivian presence. It also points to Maldivian work on marine research and conservation in those waters.

Mauritius has the stronger file in the international courts. The International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly and a tribunal under the law of the sea have all treated the detachment of Chagos from Mauritius in 1965 as unlawful. London's 2025 deal was an attempt to close that file while keeping Diego Garcia as a U.S. and British runway in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The Maldives was not a party to those cases and was not at the table when the treaty was drafted.

That is the gap Muizzu is now trying to open. He told Burnham that Malé wants “meaningful dialogue” on sovereignty and that a renewed partnership could serve stability in the Indian Ocean “at a time of increasing global uncertainty.” Meetings between British and Maldivian officials are due later this month. The letter is the public marker before those talks.

Why Burnham's answer matters

Burnham is reported to favour completing the Mauritius transfer that Keir Starmer began. If that is his position, the Maldives letter is a request he can decline. Declining it would keep the legal path that the ICJ sketched and would keep Mauritius as the only claimant London recognises. Accepting talks with Malé would add a third party to a bargain that already has to satisfy Washington, Port Louis and the expelled Chagossian community.

Diego Garcia is the reason the file will not stay quiet. The atoll holds a long runway, a lagoon that can take large ships and a listening post. The United States has used it for bombing campaigns and for pre-positioned stocks for five decades. Any sovereign who holds the rest of Chagos still has to live with that base. Mauritius accepted a lease. The Maldives has not said what it would do with the facility if its claim were ever recognised.

Muizzu has been repeating the claim since late 2024. Tuesday's letter is the first time he has put it directly to Burnham rather than to Starmer. The practical test is whether the September meetings produce a British reply that treats Malé as a consulted neighbour, or as a capital that arrived too late to the case.