Britain suffered an embarrassing diplomatic defeat on Wednesday when the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to hand the disputed Chagos islands back to Mauritius.

The United Nations General Assembly voted by 116 to six in favour of a Senegalese resolution that calls on the UK to relinquish sovereignty over British Indian Ocean Territory, while 56 nations abstained.

The vote comes three months after the International Court of Justice said Britain should relinquish sovereignty of the islands "as rapidly as possible."

The UN vote does not carry the same weight as a Security Council resolution and neither the UK nor the United States are expected to face coercive measures if they flout it, as is likely.

But it will be seen as a major moral victory for Mauritius in its on going campaign to win back sovereignty of the Islands.

Britain has claimed sovereignty over the remote Indian Ocean island chain since 1814. It paid the pre-independence government of Mauritius, then a self-governing British territory, £3 million for the islands in 1965, which it then folded into an entity called British Indian Ocean Territory.

It evicted about 2,000 people from the Chagos islands in the 1960s and 1970s so the United States could build a large airbase on Diego Garcia, the largest of its atolls. They and their descendants have been campaigning for the right to return home ever since.