President Donald Trump said Monday that he is sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to meet with Saudi King Salman amid the mounting international backlash over missing Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The kingdom has come under intense scrutiny over the disappearance of Khashoggi, who Turkish investigators believe was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Speaking to reporters, Trump said he had just spoken around 20 minutes with the Saudi king, who firmly denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance.
“It sounded like he, and also the crown prince, had no knowledge,” he said
“I don’t want to get into his mind, but it sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers,” Trump added. “Who knows? We’re going to try getting to the bottom of it very soon, but his was a flat denial.”
Trump said Pomepo would be departing Washington “literally within an hour or so” and has license to travel wherever necessary, including Turkey, to investigate what happened. Trump first announced Pompeo’s trip in a tweet in which he said Saudi Arabia is “working closely with Turkey to find answer.”
Trump also said that with Turkey’s release of jailed pastor Andrew Brunson, relations were vastly improved.
“I have a very good feeling toward Turkey. Two days ago, I did not,” he said.
His comments came hours after three Turkish officials said Saudi Arabia has agreed to allow Turkish investigators to search the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Monday, 13 days after Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, vanished upon entering the mission.
Two of the officials said the search could take place as early as Monday afternoon. Turkey had publicly scolded the Saudi government for refusing repeated requests to search the consulate, where Turkish investigators believe Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by Saudi agents.
Saudi Arabia has vehemently denied any knowledge of Khashoggi’s whereabouts. The agreement for a search of the consulate came a day after King Salman called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, thanking him for welcoming the kingdom’s proposal to set up a “joint working group” to probe Khashoggi’s disappearance, a Saudi statement said.
Khashoggi lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for the past year and wrote columns in The Washington Post criticizing the Saudi leadership. He visited the Saudi Consulate on Oct. 2 to obtain documents related to his upcoming wedding, but he was never seen leaving.
The Saudi government has faced intense pressure to reveal his fate, as Turkish officials have released details of their investigation, including video that suggests a team of Saudi agents was dispatched to Istanbul to either capture Khashoggi or kill him.
The Turkish government has also told the Trump administration that it possesses audio recordings of what occurred inside the consulate that day – evidence that U.S. officials said supports the conclusion that Khashoggi was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.
U.S. officials have also said that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered an operation to lure Khashoggi from his home in Virginia back to Saudi Arabia and then to detain him, according to U.S. intelligence intercepts of Saudi officials discussing the plot.
As part of a growing international backlash against the Saudi government, some prominent business leaders and companies have said they will no longer attend a high-profile investment conference scheduled to be held in Saudi Arabia later this month. President Trump has warned that Saudi Arabia would face “severe punishment” if it was found to have killed Khashoggi. And on Sunday, Britain, France and Germany released a joint statement expressing “grave concern” about Khashoggi’s case and calling for a “credible investigation.”
A defiant Saudi statement on Sunday said the kingdom rejects any “threats and attempts to undermine it, whether by threatening to impose economic sanctions, using political pressures, or repeating false accusations.”
During an interview that aired Sunday on “60 Minutes,” Trump stressed that the Saudis have denied any involvement.
“Well, nobody knows yet, but we’ll probably be able to find out,” he told Lesley Stahl from the CBS program. “It’s being investigated, it’s being looked at very, very strongly. And we would be very upset and angry if that were the case. As of this moment, they deny it, and they deny it vehemently. Could it be them? Yes.”
While warning of potential “severe punishment,” Trump has repeatedly all but ruled out canceling $110 billion in U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia
On Saturday, he argued to reporters at the White House that doing so would be “very foolish for our country” and only end up harming U.S. defense industries and others.
Trump said the United States competed against China, Russia and other countries for the Saudi contracts and winning it was “a tremendous order for our companies.”
(c) 2018, The Washington Post · Kareem Fahim, John Wagner, Souad Mekhennet ·
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