Trump accuses Saudis of ‘lies’
US President Donald Trump has accused Saudi Arabia of lying about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, his strongest comments to date on the affair as pressure was building on the administration on Sunday to strike a tougher line.
In an interview with the Washington Post published late on Saturday, Trump stepped back from his stance that Saudi Arabia’s latest explanation for the death of the journalist inside their Istanbul consulate was credible, but said he remained confident in the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“Obviously there’s been deception and there’s been lies,” he said of the shifting accounts offered by Riyadh.
Saudi officials originally said Khashoggi, who entered the diplomatic mission on October 2, had left unharmed, before announcing Friday he was killed inside the building in what they described as an altercation.
“Their stories are all over the place,” added Trump.
Saudi Arabia faced a growing chorus of incredulit y Sunday, with world powers demanding answers. British and French of ficia ls denounced t he latest Saudi explanation as insufficient.
Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland,
said the Saudi version lacked “consistency and credibility”.
Closer to home, pressure continued to grow on Trump to take a stronger stance against Saudi Arabia.
Several senior members of Trump’s Republican Party said they believed Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, was linked to the killing, and one called for a “collective” Western response if a link is proved.
But Trump stopped fa r short of ca lling for t he prince to be replaced, emphasising as he has before how important t he US-Saudi relationship is to Washington’s regiona l strategic goals.
Trump added that he has yet to be shown any evidence by intelligence officials that would make him believe MBS had any direct role.
“Nobody has told me he’s responsible. We haven’t reached that point. I haven’t heard either way,” the president said.
Amid Trump’s apparent equivocations, several key Republicans demanded a tougher stance.
Asked if he thought Prince Mohammed was behind the killing, a fellow Republican, Senator Bob Corker, told CNN: “Yes, I think he did it. Let’s finish this investigation.”
Corker, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, added t hat i f t he prince is implicated, “t here should be a collective response”.
Perhaps the strongest words came from Lindsay Graham, a strong Trump ally in the Senate who called for Prince Mohammed to “be removed”.
“I would like to punish those involved. It’s impossible to believe the crown prince wasn’t involved. I don’t mind military sales but I ob- ject to business with the current leadership,” he said.
“This behaviour is outside the norm to the point that the people involved need to be removed in my view. Saudi Arabia is a country and MBS is a person. I’m willing to separate the two,” he continued, accusing the prince of acting in a “barbaric fashion”.
Democrats have repeatedly lashed out at Trump’s response as weak and indecisive, and they said his latest reaction fell short as well.
Barring an unlikely “confession” from Prince Mohammed, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff said Sunday, “the president is going to accept the crown prince’s denials like he’s accepted Putin’s denials and Kim Jong-un’s denials”.
“We need to do a deep-dive probe in terms of Saudi Arabia,” he said on ABC. “We have to see if financial motives are influencing the president.”
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin meanwhile said: “We ought to formally expel, the Saudi ambassador from the US until there’s a completion of a third party investigation into this kidnap, murder and God knows what followed that occurred in Istanbul.”