Emmanuel Macron yesterday took another highly controversial step to rehabilitate the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, on the international scene. The French president invited his Arab guest to a "working dinner" at the Elysee, a deference that outraged human rights organizations and some of the opposition.
Considered – even by the US CIA itself – as the instigator of the atrocious murder and dismemberment of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate of the Wahhabi kingdom in Istanbul, in 2018, Bin Salman was treated for several years as a true pariah, as a pest whom no one in the West wanted to get close to. But little by little realpolitik, the cynical pragmatism in international relations, has prevailed. The global energy crisis stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine has helped the Saudi prince. Not in vain is he the strong man of a country that, due to its gigantic oil reserves and its flexible production capacity, has always acted as an effective regulating valve for the price of crude oil.
Macron already met with the Saudi prince in Yida last December, and two weeks ago the president of the United States, Joe Biden, did so. But receiving him in Paris and having dinner with him has a special meaning. It is extremely embarrassing for the nation that prides itself on being the homeland of human rights.
“I am shocked and outraged that Emmanuel Macron receives with full honors the executioner of my fiancé,” Hatice Cengiz, the Turkish woman Khashoggi was to marry, tweeted. The visit, with a creepy ending, to the Istanbul consulate was precisely to carry out paperwork for the wedding. According to Cengiz, realpolitik forced by energy prices "cannot justify the acquittal of the person responsible for Saudi policy with political opponents, which leads to his assassination, as was the case with Jamal."
Two NGOs, Trial International and Democracy for the Arab World (DAWN), created by Khashoggi three months before his death, yesterday filed criminal complaints in Paris against Bin Salman for alleged complicity in torture and forced disappearance. Then the Open Society Initiative foundation was added.
The complainants maintain that the Saudi prince does not enjoy immunity in France because he is not a head of state. However, Elysee sources indicated otherwise. From the presidency of the French Republic it was said, in a very generic way and also alluding to Bin Salman, that foreign leaders on an official visit enjoy criminal immunity and inviolability.
The same Elysee sources insisted that Macron would evoke human rights issues with the prince "in general terms and also in specific cases", "in the most effective way possible".
Harassed by criticism and harsh questions from the press, Macron's entourage used the same arguments as on other occasions. The Elysee underlined that "talking with all the actors in the region (Middle East) is a sine qua non condition for moving forward". “It is the only way to be able to have weight,” they added from the presidential palace.
The official reasoning that justifies Bin Salman's presence is that Macron, in recent weeks, has met with the main protagonists of the Middle East, such as the presidents of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Israeli prime minister and the leader of the Palestinian National Authority, among others, in addition to speaking on the phone with the president of Iran. Prince Bin Salman was, therefore, an unavoidable interlocutor, given the weight and influence of his country.
On the agenda of the meeting between Macron and the Saudi heir, who is also deputy prime minister and minister of defence, there was, in addition to the price of oil, very sensitive regional issues such as the war in Yemen -with great Saudi protagonism-, the fight against terrorism, the situation in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, and the strategy against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Bilateral economic relations were also discussed at dinner. In France, arms purchases and investments by Saudi sovereign wealth funds are of interest. For the Riyadh authorities it is important to attract partners for its economic transformation in the face of a future without hydrocarbons and specifically for the development of Neom, a megacity in the desert, an ambitious futuristic project.
