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04-06-2022
WASHINGTON/ RIYADH: US President Joe Biden confirmed Friday he was considering a trip to Saudi Arabia, which would be a stark reversal after he called for the kingdom to be made a pariah state.
The New York Times and other US media, quoting anonymous sources, have reported that Biden would go ahead with the long-rumored Saudi stop during an upcoming overseas tour.
The reported decision came shortly after Saudi Arabia addressed two of Biden’s priorities by agreeing to a production hike in oil which could help tame rocketing US inflation and helping extend a truce in war-battered Yemen.
“I’m not sure whether I’m going,” Biden said when asked about reports of an imminent visit. “There is a possibility that I would be going to meet with both the Israelis and some Arab countries at the time.”
“Saudi Arabia would be included in that if I did go, but I have no direct plans at the moment,” Biden told reporters.
CNN said that Biden would meet Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, 36-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was accused by US intelligence of ordering the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The trip would reportedly happen around the time Biden travels to a NATO summit in Spain and Group of Seven summit in Germany later this month.
He is also widely expected to travel to Israel where, as in Saudi Arabia, he is sure to face pointed questions about slow-moving US diplomacy with the two countries’ rival, Iran.
While running for president, Biden called for Saudi leaders to be treated as “the pariah that they are” after the ultraconservative kingdom’s chummy relationship with his predecessor Donald Trump.
Trump had largely shielded Saudi Arabia from consequences after Khashoggi, a US resident who wrote critically about Crown Prince Mohammed in The Washington Post, was lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he was strangled and dismembered.
Trump’s son-in-law and top aide, Jared Kushner, had developed a close bond with the prince known by his initials “MBS,” reportedly conversing with him over WhatsApp chats.
The reported trip will be added to a planned visit to Israel and Europe in June, unnamed US officials told multiple outlets, although details were still being hammered out.
Biden is also set to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) during the visit, according to multiple reports.
In 2021, a US intelligence report directly implicated MBS in the 2018 killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Riyadh has rejected the findings.
In the wake of the report, Washington indicated that Biden would not be dealing with MBS directly going forward, as his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, had done, but would only engage directly with his counterpart, King Salman.
Prior to taking office, Biden had said in a 2019 debate that as president he would make Saudi Arabia “pay the price” for Khashoggi’s killing, “and make them in fact the pariah that they are”. (AP)
