Trump to promote business, reassure allies on Saudi trip
US president to talk tough on radicalism Bashir to attend summit
WASHINGTON/RIYADH: When US President Donald Trump meets Saudi leaders in Riyadh on Saturday, he can expect a warmer welcome than the one given a year ago to his predecessor Barack Obama, who Riyadh considered soft on arch foe Iran and cool toward a bilateral relationship that is a mainstay of the Middle East’s security balance. Beneath the pomp, Riyadh will be looking for assurances that the Trump administration will continue its notably harsher tone toward Iran and keep up pressure, through both rhetoric and action, to stop what Saudi Arabia sees as Tehran’s destabilizing activities in the region.
The US-Saudi alliance has experienced turbulence since Riyadh faulted what it saw as Obama’s withdrawal from the region, a perceived tilt toward Iran since the 2011 Arab uprisings and a lack of direct action against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, an Iranian ally. Saudi Arabia will also want to showcase high-profile investment deals with American companies to show progress on its ambitious “Vision 2030” economic and social reform agenda, while Washington says US arms sales worth tens of billions of dollars are in the pipeline.
Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia is the first stop on his maiden international trip since taking office in January. US and Saudi officials are eager to highlight the powerful symbolism of an American president choosing to visit the birthplace of Islam as his first stop rather than to neighbors Canada or Mexico. Besides meeting with Saudi officials, Trump will also meet with leaders of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and have lunch with leaders of more than 50 Muslim countries.
Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir will also attend the gathering in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, but has received no indication whether he will meet Trump
there, Sudan’s foreign minister said yesterday. Bashir is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and is shunned by Western leaders, so any direct contact would be a diplomatic bombshell, despite thawing relations between Washington and Khartoum in recent months. Ghandour dismissed the ICC as a “political tool”. “It’s a white man’s court created to indict people in Africa”, he said.
“On the question of the Trump-Bashir handshake, nobody can pretend anything, but anyway, President Bashir has been invited by the Saudis to be in that conference,” Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour told reporters in Geneva. “We hope that everything will go through as it has been planned, and we look forward for normalization of our relations with the US,” Ghandour said, adding that he would travel with Bashir to Riyadh on Friday. Asked if he hoped to see the two leaders shake hands, Ghandour said: “I don’t have dreams but I have hopes, and I hope they will be materialized,” but added that “a handshake doesn’t mean a lot if relations are not (good)”.
Critics have accused Trump of being antiMuslim after he issued a ban, now blocked by US courts, on entry into the United States by citizens of several Muslim-majority countries, citing national security concerns. Trump’s visit “sends a clear message that the US is standing with its close allies in the region and that they’re not abandoning them,” a senior Saudi official told Reuters, reflecting the view many Gulf leaders had of Obama, who they considered had made securing a nuclear deal with Iran a higher priority than the US-Gulf alliance.
Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia in April 2016 was overshadowed by Gulf Arab exasperation with his approach to the region, and doubts about Washington’s commitment to regional security. “This (new) administration comes in and ... says, ‘No, wait a minute, Iran is active,’” the official said, referring to Gulf states’ views of Iran’s involvement through proxies in regional conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen. The Trump administration has called the nuclear agreement with Iran “the worst deal ever negotiated,” and senior administration officials have repeatedly criticized Iran’s behavior for its support for Assad, its ballistic missile activities and its support for militant groups in the region.
Mustafa Alani, the director of security and defense at the Jeddah-based Gulf Research Center think tank, said that beyond US rhetoric, Gulf leaders would like to see “America classify Iranian-supported militias as terrorist groups.” Saudi Arabia will also be looking for further US support in the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the loosely Iranaligned Houthi group and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh to restore the internationally recognized government to power.
The Obama administration backed Saudi Arabia when it launched air strikes in Yemen in March 2015 but grew sour as it saw the number of civilian casualties grow and curtailed some military support to Riyadh. By contrast, “we don’t get criticized about the war in Yemen” by the Trump administration, the senior Saudi official said. In Trump’s meeting with GCC leaders, the discussion will revolve around how to strengthen the structures of the group, which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to be more effective, a senior White House official said.
The Republican US president along with first lady Melania Trump will dine with Saudi royal family members. Trump, known for his penchant for Twitter, will participate in a Twitter forum with young people, National Security Advisor H R McMaster said on Tuesday. Trump will deliver a speech on “the need to confront radical ideology” and participate in the inauguration of a new center intended “to fight radicalism and promote moderation”, McMaster said. — Agencies