A high-level working group. That’s the mechanism Paul Bérenger wants Mauritius, the United States and the United Kingdom to build, and he’s not shy about naming his blueprint: Denmark’s playbook with Washington over Greenland. Speaking to the press yesterday morning, the FMP leader pressed the Mauritian government to organise a summit with the two powers, arguing the Chagos file is stalled for one reason: nobody has put the operational machinery in place to move it forward.
The Greenland precedent he points to is specific, almost procedural. Denmark found itself in a diplomatic standoff with Donald Trump over US ambitions on Greenland. The resolution came through a defined process. In January, US Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and Greenland’s Foreign Minister Múte B. Egede sat down together and agreed to set up a high-level working group to examine the 1951 defence agreement between the two countries. That single step did two things. It shifted Trump’s position on sovereignty, and it produced a new accord, signed in Washington, giving the United States permanent control over security and other needs in Greenland while Denmark keeps sovereignty over the island. The agreement stemming from that process was signed last Friday.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.lemauricien.com/actualites/politique/fmp-berenger-propose-la-strategie-danoise-pour-recuperer-les-chagos/718506/.
Bérenger draws the parallel directly. Mauritius faces the same obstacle, Trump, and has the same tools available. His proposal to a government he describes as running out of ideas has two parts: first, a summit with the United States and Britain bringing together all relevant ministers from the three countries, Mauritius included, the way Greenland did it; second, a high-level working group among the three countries to reach a solution that leaves Mauritian sovereignty over Chagos untouched. Delivery, he stressed, depends entirely on the government, starting with the Prime Minister, actually setting these mechanisms running rather than just discussing them.
His frustration with the pace of execution came through clearly. Bérenger said he phoned Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam this week after learning a London-based Chagossian delegation, hostile to Mauritius’s position and funded by the British far right, was heading to the United Nations. His advice: Ramgoolam should go himself, bringing a small Chagossian delegation along. That message, he indicated, didn’t land. He also took aim at the “quiet diplomacy” the Prime Minister reportedly favours, calling it an error bordering on the ridiculous, and said it was unacceptable that Ramgoolam skipped the UN trip. He reserved his sharpest words for the plan to meet the British Prime Minister’s adviser in London instead of his actual counterpart. Bérenger credited that adviser, Jonathan Powell, with real calibre (Powell had criticised the US and Europe for abandoning Palestine after the 2006 elections) and argued Powell could have been “very helpful” had Mauritius built a high-powered committee to engage him properly.
The situation isn’t lost, Bérenger judged, provided Mauritius runs a sound communication strategy. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has signalled support for a resolution but seems lost on how to get there, he said, whereas backing from Rubio and Vance could have unlocked the file. He welcomed Britain’s refusal to open talks with the Maldives over its claim to the archipelago and sovereignty questions around Chagos. Tuesday last week gave a preview of the fight ahead: Trump was blunt about the 2025 agreement itself. “I don’t support it. I think it’s terrible.”
Two other files are on Bérenger’s agenda. He announced a press conference, likely this Friday, on the next National Crime Agency and the nomination of the next electoral commissioner, a decision tied to the end-of-year expiry of Irfan Rahman’s contract. The Electoral Commission office, he said, sits at “the heart of democracy,” which is why its next head matters so much.
Asked about Benjamin Netanyahu’s UN speech on 24 September, Bérenger noted Mauritius wasn’t in the hall when the Israeli Prime Minister spoke, which is why it didn’t join the walkout. “Pa ti ena walk out parski pa ti ena walk in,” he said, adding that Foreign Affairs Minister Ritesh Ramful isn’t obliged to attend every speech, though the Mauritian delegation’s presence remains expected.
What happens next hinges on whether Ramgoolam’s government adopts the working-group model at all, or keeps betting on quiet diplomacy Bérenger has already dismissed as unworkable.