Antony Blinken and Mohammed bin Salman had an “open and sincere conversation”. On the first day of his visit to Saudi Arabia, the head of American diplomacy met, on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, in Jeddah with the crown prince. The meeting, which lasted an hour and 40 minutes, made it possible to find a certain number of points “of convergence (…) while recognizing where we have differences”, said an American official under cover of the ‘anonymity.
Antony Blinken raised with Mohammed bin Salman the question of human rights “in general and concerning specific problems”, he assured. “They discussed a potential normalization of relations with Israel and agreed to continue the dialogue in this regard.”
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The stability of Sudan and Yemen discussed
The discussions also focused on the conflict in Sudan where the United States and Saudi Arabia, mediators, fail to enforce several truces between the belligerent generals. The United States has said it is ready to resume talks in Jeddah with envoys from both sides if they are “serious” in their desire to respect the ceasefire, which would help to deliver humanitarian aid .
On this subject: In Sudan, fighting continues despite the official entry into force of a truce
Since April 15, the war in Sudan between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo has claimed more than 1,800 lives and more than one and a half million displaced persons and refugees.
MM. Blinken and bin Salman reaffirmed their “commitment to stability, security and prosperity across the Middle East and beyond”, including to end the conflict in Yemen, the spokesman said in a statement. State Department Matthew Miller.
The US Secretary of State arrived late Tuesday in Jeddah, on the Red Sea, on the first day of a visit to Saudi Arabia intended to warm relations with the kingdom. The Saudi ally, to whom Washington has provided a number of weapons, plays a key role in the region and American officials do not hide their desire to maintain strong ties.
complicated relationships
After Jeddah, Antony Blinken is going to Riyadh on Wednesday to participate in a meeting of foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Thursday, still in the Saudi capital, he will co-chair with his Saudi counterpart a meeting of the coalition of countries fighting against the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), created in 2014 and which brings together dozens of countries.
This three-day visit comes against a backdrop of historic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and two enemies of the United States, Iran and Syria, initiating a change in the geopolitical situation in the region. The Islamic Republic, sworn enemy of the United States and Israel for decades, also reopened its embassy in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, after a break of seven years.
Read again: Iran could bear the brunt of a reshuffling of the cards in the Middle East
Relations between Washington and Riyadh are complicated as Joe Biden’s administration has accused the wealthy Gulf state of human rights abuses and influencing crude prices. Human rights activists had called on Tuesday the head of the American diplomacy to raise this question with the Saudi authorities. Among them is Abdallah Al-Qahtani, a US citizen with no news of his father, Mohammad Al-Qahtani, who served a 10-year prison sentence in Saudi Arabia for founding a civil rights group. Antony Blinken “must bring up my father’s situation. Is he alive? Is he tortured? We don’t know,” he told a virtual press conference.
As for normalization with Israel, the subject is ultra-sensitive and would constitute a new upheaval in the region after the recent rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran, under the aegis of China, but also between Riyadh and Damascus, after years of cold . In a speech to the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby on Monday in Washington, Antony Blinken said his country has “a real national security interest in promoting normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.”
2023-06-07 03:12:22
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