After years of legal wrangling and negotiations, Britain said it would surrender sovereignty of the archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

The British government made the deal to return all the Chagos Islands, except for Diego Garcia, which holds a U.K.-U.S. Navy base.

The U.K. has agreed to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands, an archipelago of more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius, in a deal to secure the future of a strategically important U.