US President Joe Biden has arrived in Saudi Arabia, where he is expected to meet senior officials despite a previous promise to treat the kingdom as a “pariah” over the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Biden departed directly from Israel for the Red Sea coast city of Jeddah on Friday – becoming the first US president to fly from there to an Arab nation that does not recognise it. In 2017, his predecessor, Donald Trump, made the journey in reverse.
The trip is designed to reset the US relationship with the kingdom and during which energy supply, human rights, and security cooperation are on the agenda.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on board Air Force One on Friday that Biden will lay out “clearly and substantively” his vision for Washington’s engagement in the Middle East during his meetings in Saudi Arabia.
“He’s intent on ensuring that there is not a vacuum in the Middle East for China and Russia to fill, that American leadership and American engagement will be a feature of US policy in this region, and that we intend to play a critical role in this strategically vital region on an ongoing basis,” Sullivan said.
The White House said Biden would hold a bilateral meeting with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz at the royal palace in Jeddah and then the president and his team would have a working session with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS and Saudi ministers at the palace.
Energy and security interests prompted the president and his aides to decide not to isolate the kingdom, the world’s top oil exporter and regional powerhouse that has been strengthening ties with Russia and China.
Ahead of the visit, a US official told the Reuters news agency that Washington was not expecting Riyadh to immediately boost oil production and was eyeing the outcome of the next OPEC+ meeting on August 3.
The visit will be closely watched for body language and rhetoric. US intelligence concluded that MBS directly approved the 2018 murder of Khashoggi, but the crown prince denies having a role in the killing.
White House advisers have declined to say whether Biden will shake hands with the prince, the kingdom’s de facto ruler.
Biden said on Thursday his position on Khashoggi’s murder was “absolutely” clear. Biden made his “pariah” comment less than three years ago after the journalist’s killing, while campaigning for president.
Biden said he would raise human rights in Saudi Arabia, but he did not say specifically if he would broach the Khashoggi murder with its leaders. On Friday, Sullivan told reporters that Biden does not preview the issues he would raise with other leaders in order to “engage effectively diplomatically”.
Saudi ambassador to the United States Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, writing in US magazine Politico, reiterated the kingdom’s “abhorrence” of the killing, describing it as a gruesome atrocity, and said it cannot define US-Saudi ties.
She said the relationship should also not be seen in the “outdated and reductionist” oil-for-security paradigm.
“The world has changed and the existential dangers facing us all, including food and energy security and climate change, cannot be resolved without an effective US-Saudi alliance.”
US seeks oil production boost
Biden will meet with a broader set of Arab leaders at a summit in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah on Saturday.
The US is eager to see Saudi Arabia and its OPEC partners pump more oil to help bring down the high cost of gasoline and ease the highest US inflation in 40 years.
Saudi Arabia, alongside the United Arab Emirates, holds the bulk of spare capacity within the OPEC+ group, an alliance between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other exporters, most notably Russia.
Brent crude prices are trading at just under $100 a barrel, having hit a 14-year high of $139.13 in March, as investors weigh new COVID-19 lockdowns in top importer China and recession fears.
Source Al Jazeera
BDST: 2138 HRS, JULY 15, 2022
MSK
