The French president spoke and had lunch with the Saudi Crown Prince, questioned in the death of the journalist in 2018. “A big part of the future of the whole region is played here”, A- he justified in the face of critics.
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One day in Dubai, an evening in Doha and an afternoon in Jedda. At no charge, Emmanuel Macron has a duty to visit, in two days, the three neighbors of the Gulf, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
After the sale of 80 bursts in the Emirates, the highlight of the trip, the most contested also by the human rights defenders, will remain his visit to the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed Ben Salman, “said” MBS “. The two leaders spoke on Saturday, December 4 in Jedda, then lunch together in a royal palace of this great west coast port of the peninsula. For the occasion, the journalists had been kept out of the way, confined in the residence of the Consult of France. The Saudis had accepted the presence, at the very beginning of the meeting, that a television team and a French photographer.
Thus goes the “standardization” of the relations between France and Saudi Arabia, three years after the murder of the Journalist Jamal Khashoggi, crime in which the Saudi dolphin is involved according to different overwhelming reports, including an investigation of American CIA. The case is still worthwhile of Riyadh a sulphurous reputation, and an international isolation that the French President has chosen to break human rights organizations.
At the end of their interview, during a quick press point at the airport just before taking off for Paris, M. Macron assured to have “talked about everything, absolutely without any taboo” with his interlocutor during “Direct” and “effective” exchange on human rights issues, but without pronouncing the name of the former Washington Post columnist in the premium of the Saudi Consulate of Istanbul (Turkey) in October 2018.
“New opportunities”
m. Nor did Macron have evoked the murderer of Yemen where the Saudis have been trying for six years to crush pro-Iranian Houthist rebellion, coalition with Emiratis. The day before the meeting, a complaint had been lodged in Paris against the leaders of the two countries, for “war crime”, and “financing of terrorism”.
In this context, the Elysee also remained discreet on the various agreements signed by several French companies, including Safran, Airbus and Veolia. “The hour is no longer to display a harvest of contracts, as at the time of Sarkozy,” said a businessman present in the official delegation, “it was not necessarily convincing and dislike to the Gulf customers ” Another considers that the American obsession to China, on the background of flying oil prices, “offers new opportunities” to the European and French groups, in this country considered as a privileged partner of Washington. Not to mention that Joe Biden continues, he does not talk to the Saudi heir.
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