evidence: After a dispute running for more than 50 years, the United Kingdom will finally hand back the Chagos Islands, an archipelago located in the Indian Ocean, to the southeast African island country of Mauritius. As part of an agreement on Thursday, the governments of the UK and Mauritius jointly announced that full sovereignty of the Chagos, a remote group of more than 60 islands, would again belong to Mauritius in exchange for guarantees that a United States military base could continue operating there for the next 99 years. [...] Several British conservatives, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, opposed handing over Chagos to Mauritius, arguing that Mauritius could grant its close ally, China, access to the strategic territory, possibly proving a security threat to the US military base and undermining US-UK relations.