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At all events, all members of the House of Assembly were
present at the Conference and no dissentient voice was raised: it was thus possible for the UK delegation to accept the joint proposals and the Conference had little more to do than ratify the conclusions reached by the Seychellois themselves.
At a subsequent by-election in Praslin (caused by the death of an SDP member during the Second Marlborough House Conference) the coalition candidate decisively defeated his rival who
campaigned against the constitutional settlement, thus providing some evidence that a majority of the population was prepared to
accept the new arrangements.
The Return of the ex-Seychelles BIOT Islands
20.
The only matter which still remained outstanding at the end of the Second Constitutional Conference was the question of the return of Aldabra, Farquhar and Desroches, the former Seychelles islands now forming part of BIOT (see paragraph 8 above). The matter had been formally raised with the Americans in the course of the biannual session of the Anglo/US talks on the Indian Ocean
held in London in May 1975. On the instructions of OPD we represented strongly that return of the islands, far from casting doubt on our commitment to retain the former Mauritian islands including Diego Garcia, would make their retention more defensible internationally. Neither the US nor the UK had any plans to use the three islands for defence purposes and their return to Seychelles would be evident proof that we were prepared (as we had promised in 1965) to return the BIOT islands to their original owners once there was no further need for them. We did not expect Mauritius to campaign for the return of the ex-Mauritius islands if we returned the ex-Seychelles islands to Seychelles; but if there were trouble from this source, there was little in practical terms Mauritius could do and it was surely better to have to deal with Mauritius in isolation than to have Seychelles and Mauritius make common cause on the issue through eg, the OAU. The State Department officials present seemed receptive to this line
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