Mauritius will wait up to the end of July for the UK to finalise a deal to hand over the Chagos Islands, an official said on Thursday.

The deadline comes after London put the agreement on hold following objections from US President Donald Trump.

Mauritius Attorney General Gavin Glover said, however, that the island nation had no insight into whether the US government would ultimately give the required approval for the deal to move ahead.

"We will give them until the end of July. We will wait until then, and at that point, the Mauritian government will have to decide on the way forward depending on what happens in the United Kingdom," Glover told Anadolu News Agency.

“Spare no effort"

The Mauritian Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam met with a British delegation for their first talks since the UK paused the deal, which would cede the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius while securing a 99-year lease to operate the joint UK-US military base on the island of Diego Garcia.

In February, Trump described the deal as a "big mistake" after having previously said it was "the best that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer would get".

Mauritius Foreign Minister Dhananjay Ramful, earlier, vowed to "spare no effort" to reclaim the strategic Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, whose main island of Diego Garcia hosts a US-UK military base, AFP news agency reported.

His remarks come after Britain indicated it would shelve plans to hand back the islands unless the United States supports the deal.

US President Donald Trump has previously criticised the agreement, describing it as "an act of great stupidity".

"We will spare no effort to seize any diplomatic or legal avenue to complete the decolonisation process in this part of the Indian Ocean," Ramful said at an Indian Ocean Conference held in Mauritius.