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Diego Garcia is the largest island of the Chagos Archipelago, part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). It has been used as a joint UK–U.S. military base since the 1970s, following the expulsion of the Chagossians by the UK government.
Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, abbreviated NSF Diego Garcia, [1] is a British Ministry of Defence facility leased to the United States Navy, located on the atoll Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, for an initial period of 99 years after the forced removal and expulsion of over 2,000 native inhabitants of the island.
While the naval and airbase facilities on Diego Garcia are leased to the United States as Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, in practice, the base operates as a joint UK-US base, with the United Kingdom retaining full and continual access. [2] Diego Garcia is strategically located, offering access to East Africa, the Middle East and Southeast ...
Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Islands, or British Indian Ocean Territory (Biot), an area described as being "constitutionally distinct" from the UK. It is administered from London by a ...
The new agreement between Britain and Mauritius brought an end to their decades-long dispute regarding sovereignty over the archipelago.
Under the agreement announced in October, the UK would hand sovereignty over the islands to Mauritius, but maintain a 99-year lease over the UK-US military airbase on the largest island, Diego Garcia.
The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia.The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 individual islands, many very small, amounting to a total land area of 60 square kilometres (23 square miles). [3]
After initially denying that the islands were inhabited, British officials forcibly expelled approximately 2,000 Chagossians to mainland Mauritius to allow the United States to establish a military base on Diego Garcia. Since 1971, the atoll of Diego Garcia is inhabited by some 3,000 UK and US military and civilian contracted personnel.