President Biden said Sunday that he pressed Saudi Arabia about the murder of journalist Jamaal Khashoggi, a brutal crime that cast a pall over the commander-in-chief’s four-day trip to the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister claimed that he did not hear Biden mention Khashoggi during his meeting on Friday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is blamed by U.S. intelligence officials for the 2018 murder of the journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Biden on Sunday said “no” when asked if the account by the foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, was true. The president spoke to reporters outside the White House after returning from his trip earlier in the morning.
He met with bin Salman to boost U.S. ties to the kingdom and increase the worldwide flow of oil. Biden also wants to assert U.S. influence in the region and steer it away from rival powers China and Russia.
He arrived at the meeting facing intense scrutiny over how he would address the death of Khashoggi, a Washington Post opinion writer.
“With respect to the murder of Khashoggi, I raised it at the top of the meeting, making it clear what I thought of it at the time and what I think about it now,” he said at a Friday news conference in Jeddah.
Bin Salman claimed to the president that he was “not personally responsible” for the death, according to Biden, who added: “I indicated I thought he was.”
Biden vowed on the 2020 presidential campaign trail to make bin Salman a “pariah” over Khashoggi’s death, and lawmakers across the political spectrum howled when Biden exchanged a fist-bump greeting with the crown prince at the start of their meeting.
“I don’t think that that type of government should be rewarded with a visit by the president of the United States,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s Independent senator, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Asked about the fist bump, Biden retorted: “Why don’t you talk about something that matters?”
Over the weekend, he announced $1 billion in U.S. funding to fight hunger in the Middle East.
His trip, which featured stops in Israel and the West Bank, also was meant to assure allies that the U.S. remained focused on Iran amid ongoing fears it could acquire nuclear weapons.
“We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran,” Biden said. “We will seek to build on this moment with active, principled, American leadership.”
Amid high gas prices in the U.S. and abroad, some Biden aides hoped the president could get Saudi Arabia to boost oil production, the Washington Post reported. But no such measures were announced.
“I’m doing all I can to increase the supply for the United States of America, which I expect to happen,” Biden said Friday. “The Saudis share that urgency, and based on our discussions today, I expect we’ll see further steps in the coming weeks.”
Along with bin Salman, Biden met with numerous leaders of the region grappling with a host of diplomatic challenges.
“This is a table full of problem solvers,” he said. “There’s a lot of good we can do if we do it together.”
With News Wire Services
