July 07, 2008	Monday	Rajab 3, 1429

LONDON, July 6: There is a “strong moral case” for allowing displaced islanders from the Indian Ocean Chagos Islands to return to their homeland, a British parliamentary committee said in a report on Sunday.

The islanders were expelled from the archipelago, which is a British territory, in the 1960s and 1970s, allowing Britain to lease the main island Diego Garcia to the US military.

The British government is locked in a legal battle with the islanders after judges ruled that the methods used to block the return of the Chagos islanders were unlawful.

“We conclude that there is a strong moral case for the

UK permitting and supporting a return...for the Chagossians,” the House of Commons foreign affairs committee said in its overseas territories report.

“The FCO (foreign office) has argued that such a return would be unsustainable, but we find these arguments less than convincing.”

It added the foreign office had argued that a return would threaten security at the US military base on Diego Garcia and said it would consider the implications of a return in detail.

The report also recommended that third-generation descendents of exiled Chagossians should be given British overseas territories citizenship.—AFP