US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discusses human rights and potential normalization with Israel in Saudi Arabia visit

The head of American diplomacy Antony Blink met on the night of Tuesday June 6 to Wednesday June 7 in Jeddah with the Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on the first day of his visit to Saudi Arabiaand spoke about human rights as well as a potential normalization of relations between Riyadh and Israel.

The two men had an “open and sincere conversation” and Antony Blinken raised with Mohammed bin Salman the issue of human rights “in general and on specific issues”, said a US official under the covered with anonymity.

The meeting, which began around midnight local time at the royal palace and lasted an hour and 40 minutes, found a number of points “of convergence (…) while recognizing where we have differences”, said he added. “They discussed a potential normalization of relations with Israel and agreed to continue the dialogue in this regard,” the US official said.

Conflict in Sudan

Discussions also focused on the conflict in Sudan where the United States and Saudi Arabia, mediators, fail to enforce several truces between the warring generals. The United States has said it is ready to resume talks in Jeddah with envoys from both sides if they are ‘serious’ about respecting the ceasefire, which would help deliver humanitarian aid .

Since April 15, the war in Sudan between the army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhaneand the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR) of General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo caused more than 1,800 deaths and more than one and a half million displaced persons and refugees.

Antony Blinken and Mohammed bin Salman reaffirmed their “commitment to stability, security and prosperity across the Middle East and beyond”, including to end the conflict in the YemenState Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

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.

Anti-IS coalition

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.

The three-day visit comes against the backdrop of the historic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and two enemies of the United States, theIran and the 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.

Relations between Washington and Riyadh are complicated as the administration of Joe Biden accused the wealthy Gulf state of human rights abuses and influencing crude prices.

Human rights activists on Tuesday called on the head of American diplomacy to raise this issue 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 talk about 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 the Chine, but also between Riyadh and Damascus, after years of cold weather. 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.”

In recent years, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the Morocco normalized their relations with Israel, breaking with decades of Arab consensus conditioning the establishment of relations with Israel on the resolution of the Palestinian question.

With AFP