영국, 모리셔스와 차고스 제도 (디에고 가르시아섬) 반납 협상

[위종민]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/03/uk-agrees-to-negotiate-with-mauritius-over-handover-of-chagos-islands

UK agrees to negotiate with Mauritius over handover of Chagos Islands

2022년 11월 기사인데 디에고 가르시아섬이 포함된 차고스 제도를 모리셔스에 반납하는 협상이 개시됐었네요. 1968년에 모리셔스가 영국으로부터 독립하기 3년 전 영국은 차고스 제도를 따로 분리해 독립에서 제외했고, 2천명의 차고스섬 주민들을 쫓아낸 뒤 디에고 가르시아섬을 미군에 기지로 임대했는데 2019년 국제사법재판소, 2021년 국제해양법재판소에서 영국이 섬을 점령하는 것이 불법이라고 판결내렸다고 합니다. 

https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2022-12-12/diego-garcia-navy-indian-ocean-china-8396930.html

이 기사는 12월 기사인데 미국과 영국 간의 기지 임대 계약은 2016년 연장돼 2036년에 만료될 예정이라고 합니다. 미군은 이 중요한 기지를 포기할 생각이 없다고 합니다만, 중국이 모리셔스에 접근해 미국과 영국의 빈 자리를 채울 가능성이 있다고 합니다. 모리셔스 정부는 최대 99년간 섬을 미국에 임대하겠다고 제안했다고 합니다만 중국이 디에고 가르시아라는 요충지를 손놓고 지켜보기만 하진 않을 테지요. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/03/uk-agrees-to-negotiate-with-mauritius-over-handover-of-chagos-islands

UK agrees to negotiate with Mauritius over handover of Chagos Islands

Foreign secretary indicates major reversal of policy that could allow return of people expelled by Britain in 1970s

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Fri 4 Nov 2022 11.13 GMT

•  
•  
•  

The UK has agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the future handover of the Chagos Islands, in a major reversal of policy following years of resistance and legal defeats in international courts.

The intended agreement will allow for the return of former inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago who were forcibly displaced by the British government in the 1960s and 1970s. The UK would intend to maintain control of its strategic Indian Ocean military base in Diego Garcia, which it leases to the US.

In a written ministerial statement the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, said the aim was to reach a settlement with Mauritius early next year. It follows talks between the then prime minister, Liz Truss, and Mauritius officials in New York in October. The UK has twice been defeated in the international courts over the issue and, with ministers intent on a tilt to the Indo-Pacific, it was felt the British resistance to a handover was hampering the UK’s ability to build alliances in the region. The US appears to have received satisfactory assurances about its base.

Three years before Mauritius gained independence from the UK in 1968, London severed the Chagos Islands from the rest of the country so it could lease the island of Diego Garcia to the US for a military base. The UK then forcibly deported 2,000 Chagossians, who have waged a long legal battle to return.

In 2019 the international court of justice, the UN’s highest court, ruled that the continuing British occupation of the islands was illegal and the Chagos Islands were rightfully part of Mauritius.

The UK ignored the ruling on the grounds that it was advisory, but this position became increasingly untenable in the context of British attempts to uphold the importance of international law.

Last year the Hamburg-based international tribunal for the law of the sea ruled that the British claim to the archipelago was illegal, but the UK also refused to accept that ruling.

More recently the tribunal took up the dispute between Mauritius and the Maldives over a 37,000-sq-mile (95,000 sq km) expanse of the Indian Ocean. Both sides are claiming the fish-rich waters as their own economic zones.

Ibrahim Riffath, the attorney general of the Maldives, told the nine-judge UN panel the case brought by Mauritius exists “primarily to advance its dispute with the United Kingdom”.

The Maldives sprang a surprise late last month by declaring that it supported Mauritius in its efforts to decolonise the Chagos Islands from the UK. Until this declaration, the Maldives had always backed the UK’s continuing control of the islands.

In one of the most shameful episodes of British postwar colonialism, the then Labour government expelled the Chagossians because under international law it could only separate the archipelago from Mauritius if it had no permanent population. The archipelago was reconstituted as a colonial entity as the British Indian Ocean Territory, within which Diego Garcia and the US base could rest. All Chagossians were removed from the islands by the end of 1971. There are currently more than 2,000 US service personnel and temporary casual workers, mainly Filipino, on the base.

The Chagossians, many very poor and aged as young as four, then formed communities in the Seychelles, the UK and Mauritius. In 2002 they were granted the right to apply for British citizenship. Many have campaigned for the right of return.

In his ministerial statement, Cleverly said: “We will seek to strengthen significantly our cooperation on Indian Ocean security, maritime security and marine protection, the conservation of the environment, climate change, respect for human rights, and to tackle illegal migration, illegal fishing, drugs and arms trafficking, as well as bilateral cooperation on a range of other issues.

“The UK and Mauritius have reiterated that any agreement between our two countries will ensure the continued effective operation of the joint UK/US military base on Diego Garcia, which plays a vital role in regional and global security. We recognise the US’s and India’s interests and will keep them informed of progress.”

The Chagos Support Association said “Future sovereignity of the Chagos should be a matter for the Chagos islanders, and we’d urge the UK and Mauritian governments to involve Chagossians fully in the planned negotiations.”

 This article was amended on 3, 4 and 9 November 2022. Diego Garcia is in the Indian Ocean, not the Pacific Ocean. The forcible deportation of Chagossians took place in the 1960s and 1970s, not the 1950s. And the Chagos Islands were separated from Mauritius in 1965, not 1968 as an earlier version indicated.

https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2022-12-12/diego-garcia-navy-indian-ocean-china-8396930.html

Future of US Navy base in Diego Garcia hinges on UK-Mauritius negotiations

By 

WYATT OLSON

STARS AND STRIPES • December 13, 2022

---

U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Samuel Paparo, third from right, speaks with sailors at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, Dec. 9, 2022. (Sarah Villegas/U.S. Navy)

Negotiations now underway between the United Kingdom and a tiny Indian Ocean nation could have significant repercussions for a strategically located U.S. Navy installation on the island of Diego Garcia.

The British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes Diego Garcia, has been mired in controversy since the late 1960s when the British expelled the roughly 2,000 island inhabitants to clear the way for construction of a joint U.K.-U.S. military base.

Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia hosts units from the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Space Force and the U.K. Royal Navy. Located in the center of the Indian Ocean, the island’s airfield can accommodate bombers, which are in relatively close range of Middle Eastern and South Asian hotspots.

The original 50-year agreement between the U.S. and U.K. was extended in 2016 and is set to expire in 2036.

Most of the locals forced out 50 years ago ended up in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where many have for decades petitioned to return to the island.

Mauritius has also maintained it holds rightful sovereignty over the entire British Indian Ocean Territory, which is made up of roughly 1,000 mostly tiny islands. The U.K. has consistently rejected Mauritius’ claims and insisted that returning the original inhabitants would not be feasible.

Last month, the U.K. and Mauritian governments announced they would begin negotiations to resolve “all outstanding issues” on the territory, according to a Nov. 22 brief published by The House of Commons Library, a research arm within the U.K. Parliament.

U.S. officials have shown no inclination to abandon the island, a position highlighted last week during a visit to Diego Garcia by the head of U.S. Pacific Fleet.

Adm. Samuel Paparo spent Thursday and Friday meeting with the installation’s leadership, uniformed personnel and contract workers to discuss the importance of the facility for supporting operational forces deployed to the Indian Ocean, the Navy said in a news release Friday.

“The visit underscored the strategic importance of Diego Garcia to an enduring free and open Indo-Pacific by enabling presence, assured access, and defense to the global commons,” the news release stated.

Diego Garcia was a key logistical hub during America’s 20-year military intervention in Afghanistan.

Some British and American observers are concerned that China would fill any vacuum created by a withdrawal of U.S. and British military presence on Diego Garcia.

During a meeting last month of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Henry Smith, a Conservative Party member of Parliament, asked the U.K. foreign secretary for assurances that the negotiations with Mauritius would have “an absolute red line” on British and U.S. security interests, particularly as they concern China.

“I can give an absolute assurance in that regard,” James Cleverly responded. “This is an issue that we take incredibly seriously. We are very alive to that, and we will make sure that that is at the heart of the British position on the negotiations that we have in Mauritius.”

Fellow Conservative lawmaker Daniel Kawczynski said he was contacting U.S. lawmakers to “sound the alarm” about the negotiations, according to a Dec. 2 article by the London-based tabloid Daily Mail.

“If you look at the amount of investment the Chinese have in Mauritius, I would argue that for all intents and purposes they control Mauritius,” Kawczynski told the newspaper.

“They have a policy of hoovering up all of these islands in the South China Sea … the idea the Chinese are not going to take advantage of us giving up these islands is wrong,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, told the Daily Mail that the subcommittee should look into the issue.

But Blake Herzinger, an Indo-Pacific defense policy expert and a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, wrote last year that concerns about the U.S. being ousted from the island are overblown.

The Mauritian government “has sought to assuage those fears by offering, twice, to lease the land to the US for up to 99 years, if it is returned to their control,” Herzinger wrote in an essay published online Feb. 15, 2021, by the Australia-based think tank Lowy Institute.

In addition, Mauritius’ ambassador to the United Nations has said he favors continued U.S. presence at Diego Garcia, Herzinger wrote.

[백선호]

2003년 싱가포르에서 살 때 주말에 싱가포르 육군사관학교 SAFTI 도서관에 가서 복사한 1971년 Navy International 기사에 당시 소련이 모리셔스에 해군기지를 두려고 했다는 얘기가 있네요.

[위종민]

프레드릭 포사이스의 어떤 소설에서 70년대~80년대에 소련이 아프리카 등 빈국에 영향력 확대하려고 이것저것 쥐어주다가 제 풀에 나자빠지는 걸 비판적으로 묘사했던 기억이 나는데, 중국은 소련보다는 돈이 많으니.. 이런저런 시도가 참 위협적입니다.

[Minowski(김유철)]

저기도 보면 참 씁쓸한게........ 영국입장에서는 국력이 약해지니 속된 말로 국제재판을 생깔수도 없어졌고, 공론화해서 UN차원에서 지속적으로 문제제기 한 것은 분명 미영의 인도양패권을 약화시키는데 목적이 있는 중러의 지원의 지원이었던 것이 분명하긴하고.... UN에서 기권이나 반대했던 나라들은 대부분 소위 EU를 포함한 룰을 기반으로 세상이 움직여야한다고 떠드는 착한(?) 나라들이셨고...... 비슷한 시기에 있었던 중-필리핀간의 재판은 알아도 이 케이스는 아는 사람이 별로 없고... 뭐 세상은 요지경이다 싶습니다.

[백선호]

Rules-based order를 항상 주장했으니 말한 바를 실천할 수 밖에 없죠...

[위종민]

디에고 가르시아 따로 떼놓고 미군에 공여한 건 영국이 뭐라고 반박할 건덕지가 없는 건이어서..