27 (EUROPE PRESS)
French President Emmanuel Macron, who is on a tour of the African continent, will receive the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salmán, for a private working dinner at the Elysée Palace on Thursday.
The Elysee has confirmed in a statement the meeting between Bin Salmán and Macron, who have already met in 2021, although a press conference with questions is not planned, since it is a “working dinner” that will be held in Thursday night.
This visit, which appears on the agenda of the French president, will take place after the crown prince met on Tuesday with the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in the Greek capital, Athens, to promote bilateral cooperation in the framework of the first stop of his European tour.
Mitsotakis was one of several Western leaders to visit Riyadh since the assassination of American journalist Jamal Khashogi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The meeting followed the two business forums held this year in Riyadh last March and also in Athens at the end of May.
These contacts on European soil take place after the meeting of the Saudi crown prince with the president of the United States, Joe Biden, within the framework of his tour of the Middle East in mid-July, in which he reiterated his innocence in the murder case. of the journalist.
Jashogi, a columnist for the newspaper ‘The Washington Post’, went to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 to collect some papers to be able to marry his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz. However, he was never heard from again, his remains have not been found and the Turkish and Western intelligence services suggest that the order to kill him could only come from the highest echelons of the Saudi kingdom.
Due to the current fuel crisis due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, the increase in oil production is in the spotlight and, in fact, it was one of the topics of the recent meeting between Biden and Bin Salmán, very criticized, since a declassified CIA report points to him as being responsible for the murder of Khashogi in the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul in October 2018.
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