Chagos Archipelago sovereignty dispute

Common card · No. 260458

The Chagos Archipelago sovereignty dispute is a dispute between Mauritius and the United Kingdom over sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago, a group of coral atolls in the central Indian Ocean that the United Kingdom has administered as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) since 1965. The archipelago's largest island, Diego Garcia, is the site of a joint British and American military base. Mauritius claims the archipelago as part of its territory, from which it says the United Kingdom unlawfully detached it before Mauritian independence; for decades the United Kingdom maintained that the territory was British and would be ceded to Mauritius only when it was no longer needed for defence purposes. The archipelago had been administered as a dependency of Mauritius since it was ceded to Britain in 1814. In September 1965, during the negotiations on Mauritian independence, the Mauritian ministers agreed in principle to its detachment in return for £3 million and a set of undertakings, including...

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