CIA chief met with Saudi crown prince in April in bid to mend ties: WSJ
CIA Director William Burns had an unannounced meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last month, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The visit, which took place in mid-April in the Saudi Arabia port city Jeddah, came as the administration of President Joe Biden pushes to repair relations with Riyadh.
Although details of what the two discussed were not available, recent sources of US-Saudi tension include oil production, the Ukraine conflict, the Iran nuclear deal and the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
“It was a good conversation, better tone than prior US government engagements,” one American official said of the meeting with Prince Mohammed, who runs Saudi Arabia’s daily affairs on behalf of his 86-year-old father, King Salman.
Several US officials have visited the kingdom in the past year in a bid to mend relations, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Burns met the Saudi Prince with the Washington-Riyadh relationship at its lowest point in decades, with then presidential candidate Biden notably saying in 2019 that the kingdom should be treated like a pariah over human-rights issues such as the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are,” Biden said during a Democratic presidential debate.
According to a secret US intelligence assessment released last year by Biden, Prince Mohammed approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi, which resulted in his 2018 murder and dismemberment inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
Saudi Arabia initially issued conflicting stories about Khashoggi’s disappearance, but eventually claimed that the Washington Post columnist had been killed in a “rogue” operation.
Prince Mohammed has denied involvement in the murder and told Biden’s national security adviser in September that he never wanted to discuss the matter again, The Wall Street Journal reported.
After Russia began a military operation in Ukraine on 24 February, the Biden administration banned imports of Russian oil and gas and urged Riyadh to boost production and bring down prices. The request was, however, turned down by the Saudi regime.
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