Trump-backed Saudi crown prince wants to meet Erdogan, says Turkey
WASHINGTON: Turkey’s top diplomat says Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has requested to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the upcoming Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Mevlut Cavusoglu told Turkey’s CNN-TURK TV on Friday that Turkey sees no “obstacle” for a meeting between the two, but added that Erdogan would make the final decision on whether to meet the prince at the two-day G20 summit that starts on November 30.
It would be the first official contact between the prince and Erdogan, who has kept international pressure mounting on Saudi Arabia over the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. the crown prince that he was involved, Trump said on Thursday that “maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very, very vicious place”.
Critics in Congress and highranking officials in other countries are accusing Trump of ignoring human rights and giving Saudi Arabia a pass for economic reasons, including its influence on the world oil market. Trump said this week he would not impose harsher penalties on Bin Salman over the death and dismemberment of the Washington Post columnist.
BIN SALMAN EMBARKS ON A REGIONAL TOUR
Bin Salman embarked on Thursday on a regional tour starting with the UAE, his first official trip abroad since Khashoggi’s murder.
He will visit a “number of brotherly” Arab states at the request of his father, King Salman, the royal court said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, without naming the countries.
Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed welcomed him on his first stop in the UAE, according to the Emirati state news agency WAM.