Biden to meet with Saudi crown prince Mohammed despite ‘pariah’ pledge

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U.S. President Joe Biden arrives at Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, U.S., June 14, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

According to Reuters, U.S. President Joe Biden will meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a trip to the Middle East in July, in a break with his campaign pledge of making the kingdom a “pariah” as he struggles to combat record high U.S. gasoline prices.

Weeks after taking office, Biden shifted U.S. policy on Saudi Arabia, adopting a tougher stance over the kingdom’s human rights record and in particular the killing and dismembering of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in 2018. U.S. intelligence implicated the prince in the murder. The Saudi government has denied any involvement by him.

Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump had a close relationship with the prince, the defacto ruler of the country. But while a presidential candidate in 2019, Biden vowed to make Saudi Arabia “pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are” over the killing of Khashoggi. The White House has said, as recently as this month, that Biden’s view has not changed.

Biden will also travel to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other leaders to reaffirm his commitment to a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the U.S. official said.

The visit will help “integrate Israel into the Middle East,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has signaled its backing for the so-called Abraham Accords under which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain forged relations with Israel two years ago. But Riyadh has stopped short of formally recognizing neighboring Israel.

The talks with the crown prince – part of Biden’s first trip to the region – are seen by rights advocates as at odds with his promise to put human rights at the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Biden’s trip from July 13 to July 16 will also include a stop in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if Biden “determines it’s in his interest to engage with any particular leader, and if such an engagement can deliver results, then he will do so.”

The official pointed to the crown prince’s role in helping secure an extension of a U.N.-brokered truce between Yemen’s warring parties as an example of what he said was a need to engage with Saudi Arabia as way to help bring peace and security to the region.

Biden’s July 15-16 visit to the kingdom comes after the OPEC+ group of oil-producing nations, led by Saudi Arabia, agreed to boost oil production to offset Russian losses – following Western sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine – and combat surging oil prices and inflation.

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