JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — President Joe Biden arrived Friday in Saudi Arabia where he sat down with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a controversial meeting he had earlier insisted would not take place.
The crown prince greeted Biden as he arrived at the royal palace where the two leaders exchanged a fist bump, avoiding the potentially harmful optics of a handshake.
Biden was scheduled to meet one-on-one with King Salman, followed by a meeting with the crown prince and Saudi ministers.
The president had sought to distance himself ahead of the trip from the crown prince, who the U.S. intelligence community concluded was behind the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
When asked in June if he would be meeting with the crown prince, who is also widely referred to as MBS, Biden told reporters he would not. “I’m not going to meet with MBS,” he said then. “I’m going to an international meeting, and he’s going to be part of it.”
But as the de facto leader of the conservative kingdom, the crown prince is central to Biden’s wider foreign policy agenda of countering the growing nuclear threat from Iran, improving relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and increasing global oil production. White House officials have said that Biden is looking to “recalibrate, not rupture” relations with Saudi Arabia.
Still, the meeting with the crown prince seemingly represents a retreat from Biden’s vow during the campaign to punish Saudi Arabia for the killing of Khashoggi — to “make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.”
Biden said Thursday that he would raise human rights issues during his meetings in Saudi Arabia, but when asked by reporters, avoided saying whether he would specifically bring up the killing of Khashoggi.
One key deliverable Biden could get from his visit would be a commitment from the Saudis to increase oil production as U.S. consumers at home grapple with record oil prices.
But that move is seen as unlikely, given Biden’s frosty relationship with the crown price and questions around whether the country even has enough capacity to significantly ramp up production, oil industry analysts have said.
Biden arrives in Saudi Arabia, where he will also attend a summit of Gulf leaders, after nearly three days of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
In a small step toward normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Biden is the first U.S. president to fly directly from Israel to Saudi Arabia, a route that was previously off-limits. Saudi officials announced Friday that they would also open the country’s air space to all commercial airlines, including those traveling to and from Israel.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
