JOE BIDEN PLANS TO VISIT GULF COUNTRIES AMID RISING GAS PRICES: REPORT

Thu 02 June 2022:

In the face of rising gas prices, US President Joe Biden is expected to travel to the Middle East, where he will meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the president once shunned as a killer.

The White House is working on a proposal to have a one-on-one meeting between Biden and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), as well as Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, according to the Associated Press.

However, no official trips have been made about the trip.

The trip is being tentatively planned after a G7 summit in Germany and a NATO meeting in Spain and would also include a visit to Israel, in which Biden would meet Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Reuters reported quoting official sources.

The US leader had blamed Prince Mohammed for the 2018 killing and dismemberment of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a newspaper critic of the crown prince.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to say if Biden will visit Saudi Arabia. She stated that she had no preview trips planned and that Biden maintained his previous views on the crown prince.

The potential visit comes at a time when Biden is attempting to find ways to reduce the country’s high gasoline prices.

Saudi Arabia’s willingness to expand oil production is currently unknown. It has previously refused US pleas to do so, citing OPEC’s output pact with Russia and nine other producers as reason.

As demand rebounded from the coronavirus pandemic, the so-called OPEC+ group has been unwinding record output cuts in place since 2020, but not as fast as the West and other consumers want.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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