Newsman: President Joe Biden met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his first visit to Saudi Arabia last Friday.
The first meeting for the two leaders and their chummy gesture was swiftly criticized. But Biden insisted that he did not shy away from pressing the crown prince on the kingdom’s abuses.
“I said, very straightforwardly, for an American president to be silent on an issue of human rights is inconsistent with who we are and who I am,” Biden said after the meeting. “I’ll always stand up for our values.”
Biden said Prince Mohammed claimed that he was “not personally responsible” for the death of Khashoggi, who wrote for The Washington Post. “I indicated I thought he was,” the president said he replied.
Biden announced that U.S. peacekeepers would leave the Red Sea island of Tiran by the end of the year, paving the way for Saudi Arabia to develop tourist attractions there.
Biden also said progress was being made on extending a cease-fire in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia had been battling Iran-backed militants for years, leading to a humanitarian crisis.
Saudi Arabia was the final stop in Biden’s four-day Middle East trip, which kicked off on July 13 in Israel and Palestine.
As part of the bilateral agreements signed between the two sides, Biden reaffirmed the US commitment to help Saudi Arabia defend its territory and people from external attacks, particularly those launched by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.
The two sides made several joint commitments to the wider region, among them an agreement to sustain and extend the UN-mediated truce in Yemen and engage in a diplomatic process to reach a wider settlement of the conflict.
Both sides agreed to intensify their efforts to preserve the free flow of commerce and deter illicit smuggling into Yemen through strategic waterways in the region by expanding their joint naval operations focused on the Red Sea and Bab Al-Mandab Strait.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the two sides agreed that peacekeepers, including American soldiers, will depart Tiran Island by the end of the year, after which the island will be developed for tourism purposes.
In furtherance of its Vision 2030 agenda to become a regional travel and entertainment hub and in accordance with the principles of the Chicago Convention of 1944, Saudi Arabia announced its decision to allow all civilian air carriers to fly over its airspace.
Both sides also agreed to extend visa validity to 10 years for nationals of both countries to visit for business and tourism.
On the technology front, Saudi and US officials agreed to pursue several major infrastructure projects, including a new bilateral framework for cooperation on 5G — using open, virtualized and cloud-based radio access networks — and the development of 6G.
Saudi Arabia has committed to a significant investment for this project under the umbrella of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, which Biden announced at the G7 Summit in June.
The Kingdom’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology signed a memorandum of understanding with IBM to train 100,000 young Saudis over a period of five years.
A key feature of the visit was energy security in light of the war in Ukraine and the resulting Western embargoes on Russian oil and gas. The two sides agreed to expand cooperation on energy security, with Saudi officials committing to support the balancing of the global oil market. US officials welcomed the Saudi commitment to increase oil production by 50 percent above what was planned for July and August. Nevertheless, the Saudi crown prince made it clear the Kingdom would not expand monthly production beyond 13 million barrels.
The US welcomed Saudi Arabia’s support for the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, which aims to strategically invest in projects that support digital connectivity, supply chain sustainability and climate and energy security focused on low- and middle-income countries.
It also welcomed the leading role played by Saudi Arabia in strengthening relations with Iraq, including the commitment to link the electricity networks of Saudi Arabia and Gulf Cooperation Council countries to the Iraqi grid to provide it with diversified energy sources and wean it off reliance on Iran.
The dialogue also resulted in the signing of two bilateral agreements on cybersecurity with Saudi Arabia’s National Cybersecurity Authority — one with the FBI and another with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The two sides will expand their cooperation, share information about threats and activities of malicious actors to enhance their shared defense and collaborate on best practices, technologies, tools and approaches to cybersecurity training and education.
They agreed to expand cooperation in space exploration, including human spaceflight, Earth observation, commercial and regulatory development, and responsible behavior in outer space.
Saudi Arabia welcomed greater mutual investments in the areas of defense, renewable energy, manufacturing, healthcare, technology and innovation, which are contributing to job creation and localization goals. (SPA)
As part of the agreement, Saudi Arabia signed the Artemis Accords and restated its commitment to the responsible, peaceful and sustainable exploration and use of outer space.
Both nations also welcomed a new agreement between their respective ministries of health to share information, build capacity, collaborate on disease surveillance, address the health concerns of women and special needs populations, and pursue public policies oriented toward disease prevention and health promotion.
Saudi Arabia welcomed greater mutual investments in the areas of defense, renewable energy, manufacturing, healthcare, technology and innovation, which are contributing to job creation and localization goals.
New agreements include investments by Boeing, Raytheon, Medtronic and Digital Diagnostics, and IKVIA in the healthcare sector, and many other US companies across the energy, tourism, education, manufacturing and textiles sectors.
Other deals include Saudi Aramco Energy projects in recycled thermal plastics in the US, agreements in developing and implementing healthcare data and technology solutions, as well as supply chain localization for medical device technologies in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis released a steady stream of photos and videos from private meetings that journalists were barred from attending.
Afterward, reporters were only briefly allowed into a meeting that Biden and the crown prince held with their advisers. The two men sat across from each other, an arrangement that burnished the perception that they are counterparts. It’s an image that the crown prince has been eager to foster as he solidifies his path to the throne after sidelining, detaining and seizing the assets of royal rivals and critics.
Biden has spent his first trip to the Middle East since taking office trying to convince people otherwise.
During an earlier stop in Israel, he said he was going to Saudi Arabia to “promote U.S. interests in a way that I think we have an opportunity to reassert what I think we made a mistake of walking away from: our influence in the Middle East.”
