After years of negotiations, the UK is giving up its sovereignty over a cluster of strategically important Indian Ocean islands. The move has led to criticism from Britain's Conservative opposition and some local Indigenous groups.

Britain on Thursday said it would give up sovereignty of a remote Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius but will maintain there a strategic military base that it shares with the United States, in what US President Joe Biden described as a "historic agreement".

The government of Mauritius has long argued that it was illegally forced to give the Chagos Islands away in return for its own independence from the UK in 1968. At the time, the British government had already negotiated a secret deal with the US, agreeing to lease it the largest atoll, Diego Garcia, for use as a military base.