US President Joe Biden plans to visit Saudi Arabia this month, reports said on Thursday, a stark reversal for a leader who once called for the kingdom to be made a pariah.
The reported decision comes hours after Saudi Arabia addressed two of Biden’s priorities by agreeing to a production hike in oil and helping extend a truce in war-battered Yemen.
The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, quoting anonymous sources, said that Biden would go ahead with the long-rumored Saudi Arabian stop on an upcoming trip.
Photo: Reuters
CNN said that Biden would meet Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, 36-year-old Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), who was accused by US intelligence of ordering the 2018 murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she had no travel to announce, adding only: “The president will look for opportunities to engage with leaders from the Middle East region.”
However, a senior administration official told Agence France-Presse that if Biden “determines that it’s in the interests of the United States to engage with a foreign leader and that such an engagement can deliver results, then he’ll do so.”
While not confirming the trip, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was “no question that important interests are interwoven with Saudi Arabia.”
The trip would reportedly happen around the time Biden travels to a NATO summit in Spain and G7 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 Arabian leaders to be treated as “the pariah that they are,” after Riyadh’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 the crown prince in the Washington Post — was lured into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul where he was strangled and dismembered.
The reported plan for Biden to visit the kingdom drew fire from opponents of the Saudi government, including Abdullah Alaoudh, the son of an imprisoned academic.
“MBS has blood on his hands,” he said in a statement.
“If Biden gives him the US meeting MBS so desperately wants, the bloody handshake will send a clear message to tyrants everywhere: You can always count on America to betray its values and reward bad behavior,” Alaoudh added.
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