Pompeo meeting great, Al Jubeir says

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo held an hour-long meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting in Argentina amid growing Congressional pressure to punish the kingdom further over its killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

“It was a great meeting — very productive,” Al Jubeir said Friday as he left the Park Hyatt Hotel in Buenos Aires. “We discussed challenges in the region and the bilateral relationship and ways of moving it forward.”

Al Jubeir declined to say whether the pair discussed Khashoggi, who was killed in early October after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul for paperwork related to his planned wedding. The State Department also declined immediate comment on the meeting, Pompeo’s first known encounter with the foreign minister since he visited Saudi Arabia in October.

The meeting wasn’t on Pompeo’s public schedule and appeared to come together at the last minute. Earlier in the week, Pompeo and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis told senators that the strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia, and the fight against Al Houthi militia in Yemen, were too important to risk a broader rupture in ties with the kingdom.