And referring to ongoing US-Iran talks on Tehran's controversial nuclear programme, Trump said: "Should Iran decide not to make a Deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia and the airfield located in Fairford in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime."

The United States said Tuesday it would hold talks with Mauritius on retaining its military presence on an Indian Ocean archipelago being returned by Britain in a deal earlier denounced by President Donald Trump.

President Trump is reversing course and back to taking swipes at a UK plan to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while still leasing a key military base there. "DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!

Diego Garcia Island is at the heart of a controversy of the United Kingdom’s handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. (Shutterstock/Zelvan) The Chagos Islands are far closer, geographically and historically, to the Maldives.

Donald Trump has called the plan to transfer sovereignty ‘stupid’ and linked it to his own push to acquire Greenland

President Donald Trump’s description earlier this month of the UK–Mauritius agreement on the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands as “an act of great stupidity” briefly turned the world’s attention to the remote archipelago.

The Maldives commences legal proceedings to recover the maritime area lost following a ruling by an international tribunal.

President Trump again took a swing at the United Kingdom on Wednesday for giving Diego Garcia, an island that is part of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius. “I have been telling Prime Minister Keir Starmer,

Feb 17 (Reuters) - Four Chagos islanders have landed on one of the Indian Ocean archipelago's atolls to establish what they say will be a permanent settlement, a move they hope will complicate a British plan to transfer the territory to Mauritius.