Emmanuel Macron who is the French President and the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have confirmed speculations that they have agreed to work “to ease the effects” of the Ukraine war.
This had been revealed by Macron’s office on Friday after talks in Paris that marked the full diplomatic rehabilitation of the Saudi leader.
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Like the United States President, Joe Biden who had also visited Riyadh earlier this month, Macron had also been keen to secure extra oil production from the de facto Saudi leader who was a pariah in the West until recently.
A French statement made no reference to any agreement during a dinner on Thursday night, but said the two men had agreed to “intensify their cooperation to ease the effects (of the war) in Europe, the Middle East and the world”.
The meeting outraged rights groups because of bin Salman’s suspected role in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Western leaders snubbed the 36-year-old prince after Saudi agents killed Khashoggi inside Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul. But the heir to the Middle East’s most powerful throne is being courted again as Europe and its allies urgently seek fresh sources of fossil fuels to replace lost Russian production.
As he left on Friday, bin Salman expressed his “deepest gratitude and appreciation for the warm reception and hospitality” in a statement posted online by the Saudi foreign ministry.
While Biden fist-bumped bin Salman as he arrived in Riyadh, Macron shook hands on the steps of the Elysee Palace as he welcomed the prince.
“He’s shaking the hand for a long time of a man whose hands are covered in blood,” senior left-wing MP Alexis Corbiere told BFM television on Friday.
Corbiere also took aim at bin Salman’s role overseeing Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen in 2015 against Iran-backed Huthi rebels.