AFTER years of prevarication, the British Government has finally agreed to allow some former inhabitants of the Chagos islands to make an historic visit to their Indian Ocean archipelago, which they were forced to leave four decades ago to make way for a key US military base.

In a move that could signal a softening of the Government’s controversial policy of refusing to allow the islanders to return home, 102 middle-aged and elderly survivors will set off by ship next week from Mauritius to the British colony.

“We are all very very excited,” said Olivier Bancoult, the Chagos Islands leader, who will accompany his aged mother on the trip. “We have dreamt for years to be able to visit our native land and the graves of our ancestors. Finally, the dream is about to become a reality.”

M Bancoult said that he was removed by the British exactly 38 years ago and has been fighting for the right of his people to return ever since. British officials said yesterday that the trip was purely “humanitarian” and intended to allow former inhabitants to make one-day stops to the three main islands and visit the ruins of what were once thriving communities.

But the journey, which is costing the Government £400,000, does represent a symbolic gesture to correct what is regarded as a shameful episode in modern British colonial history.

After concluding a deal with Washington in 1966 for the construction of a US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the 65 islands, Britain removed all 2,000 inhabitants from their homes. They were dumped hundreds of miles away in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they have languished as refugees. Only US military personnel, British officials and scientists who study the pristine tropical islands have been allowed into the area since.

Some compensation was paid to the islanders, who now number several thousand but, until the upcoming trip, they have been forbidden from returning home on the ground that their presence could threaten the security of the US base.

Over the past six years the dispute has turned into a fierce legal tug-of-war, pitting a tiny island nation against the combined might of Britain and America.

In 2000 the High Court ruled that the removal of the islanders was illegal. But they were blocked once again by the Government, which resorted to draconian colonial powers. The British justified their position by citing a report, commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which concluded that repopulating the islands would be “precarious and costly”.

But the islanders have once again petitioned the High Court, which is due to deliver its ruling in the coming weeks. A separate legal challenge in Washington is being made against the US Government.

What the US and British governments have failed to explain is why the Chagos islanders and the American military are not able to coexist on an archipelago that stretches more than 190km (120 miles) in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

PARADISE LOST

The military base became fully operational in the mid-1980s

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