Khashoggi tapes given to European nations: Erdogan
LET the 2020 White House race begin. Last week’s elections sounded the starting gun for a long, crowded, expensive and no doubt dramatic race for the presidency.
Democrats, riding a wave of momentum from their gains in the US House of Representatives, enter the presidential cycle without a clear frontrunner for the first time since the start of the 2004 campaign.
More than two dozen possible contenders, including former vicepresident Joe Biden and a gaggle of senators, governors, mayors and business leaders, have been jockeying for months to line up donors
and evaluate their shot at the party’s nomination. Awaiting the winner will almost
certainly ISTANBUL: Turkey had given recordings related to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi to Germany, France and Britain, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, seeking to maintain international pressure on Riyadh over the Saudi journalist’s death.
Khashoggi, a critic of de facto Saudi ruler Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate last month in a hit which Erdogan says was ordered at the ‘‘highest levels’’ of the Saudi Government.
His killing provoked global outrage but little concrete action by world powers against Saudi Arabia.
Erdogan said yesterday that for the first time the three European Union states had heard the recordings.
CIA director Gina
Haspel be President Donald Trump, a Republican whose approval ratings have been mostly stuck below 50% since he took office but whose popularity within his party will make any potential challenge from another Republican the longest of long shots.
Trump loomed over Tuesday’s midterm elections, fuelling turnout among Democrats eager to reject him and driving many Republican candidates to pledge support for him or else face a backlash from their conservative base.
Democrats are already wrestling with questions about which candidate, strategy and approach are most likely to beat Trump on November 3, 2020. Many Democrats are expected to jump in the race early — within the next few months.
Whoever emerges from the gruelling statebystate Democratic nominating process, which begins in Iowa in early 2020, will have to stand up to the pugilistic Trump while developing an appealing alternative agenda and uniting the party’s sometimes feuding progressive and establishment wings, Democrats said.
‘‘There will be a lot for Democrats to work through this time,’’ said Jennifer Palmieri, communications director for Hillary
Clinton’s heard an audio recording of Khashoggi’s death when she visited Istanbul, two sources told Reuters last month.
Sources with knowledge of the issue have told Reuters that Turkey has several audio recordings.
They include the killing itself and conversations predating the operation which Turkey subsequently uncovered, the sources said. These had led Ankara to conclude from an early stage that the killing was premeditated.
One source familiar with the recordings said that officials who heard them had been horrified by their contents. One of Prince Mohammed’s top aides, Saud alQahtani, featured prominently in them throughout, sources said. — Reuters 2016 run. ‘‘It’s not just finding the person who can beat Trump, but also the person who has a vision for unifying the country.’’