US President Joe Biden accused the Saudi foreign minister of lying on his return to the White House on Saturday, after the minister claimed he did not hear Biden tell the Saudi Crown Prince that he holds him responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Whether Mr Biden would confront Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on the murder of the dissident and Washington Post journalist was a point of major controversy when the President’s first Middle East tour was announced.
He was widely criticised of putting oil before blood, particularly given that he had vowed to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” state during his presidential campaign because of the brutal murder.
The CIA believes that the young reformist crown prince dispatched the hit squad that kidnapped Khashoggi at the consulate in Istanbul and brutally dismembered his body. MbS has always flatly denied this.
Speaking to Fox News on Saturday, Adel al Jubeir, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs said that he “didn’t hear that particular phrase,” from Biden blaming MbS for the murder.
According to Mr Jubeir’s version of accounts, MbS told Biden that the Kingdom had been working to stop a repeat of mistakes, such as Khashoggi’s killing, but that the US had also made mistakes too.
Saudi officials told local media that the crown prince responded to Biden speaking about the Khashoggi murder by bringing up the US’ inaction over the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh in occupied Palestine and long-running torture at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Asked by reporters whether Mr Jubeir was telling the truth in his version of events, the president flatly said “no”.
Mr Biden also seemed defensive of his friendly greeting of the crown prince, who he fist bumped upon meeting, telling reporters to “talk about something that matters”.
While the defining image of the fist bump will go some way to repairing troubled US-Saudi relations, the controversial trip left few major successes for the US administration with no immediate deal secured for Saudi Arabia to produce more oil on the back of the war in Ukraine.
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