US pulls out of Saudi meet in first rebuke over Khashoggi probe

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration was finally embarrassed on Thursday into pulling out of Saudi investment conference after the US President and his minions were widely seen as shilling for a Saudi monarchy that is under scrutiny for the grisly murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey earlier this month.

After days of soft-balling and soft-peddling the issue amid mounting international outrage and scrutiny over the brutal murder by a Saudi hit squad that cornered Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Trump White House administered its first tentative rebuke, asking its Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to can his appearance at the Future Investment Initiative Summit in Riyadh on October 23-25.

"Just met with @realDonaldTrump and @SecPompeo and we have decided, I will not be participating in the Future Investment Initiative summit in Saudi Arabia," Mnuchin tweeted on Thursday morning, even as the President and his cohorts, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, were being pilloried for putting business and commerce over human rights and free speech.



Trump himself had repeatedly given the Saudi monarchy and its principal Prince Mohammad bin Salman the benefit of doubt in the barbaric murder of Khashoggi, a one-time loyalist who had turned a dissident. Khashoggi, nephew of the infamous arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi who was linked at one time with the Indian guru Chandra Swami, was a columnist for the Washington Post and a US resident living in the Greater Washington area. He was also acquainted with Osama bin Laden and according to reports in the Gulf media, tried to get him to abjure terrorism.

Turkish authorities who have pieced together events leading to his death based on electronic and forensic evidence have suggested that a 15-member Saudi hit squad arrived at the Saudi consulate and slaughtered Khashoggi, possibly using a bone cutter. They also suspect his dismembered body may have been disposed of in the woods outside Istanbul.

President Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was sent to Riyadh to talk to Prince Salman about the murder, appeared to give the Saudi monarch the benefit of doubt over claims that it was a botched operation by rogue Saudi intelligence agents. But intelligence reports and investigation by the media point to several members of the hit squad being either part of Prince Salman’s inner circle or his security detail, with the inevitable conclusion that the Saudis are now working on a cover-up and he may not have been unaware of the operation.

Hours before Mnuchin bailed out of the Riyadh investment conference, dubbed Saudi Davos, Pompeo said the Saudis assured him "they will conduct a complete, thorough investigation of all of the facts surrounding Mr Khashoggi and that they'll do so in a timely fashion, and that this report itself will be transparent for everyone to see, to ask questions about, and to inquire with respect to its thoroughness."

Both Trump and Pompeo were panned for being credulous and putting business interests – in particular a $110 billion Saudi-US arms deal that will create jobs in the US – before human rights and the murder of a US resident.

The administration’s initial stance also appeared to support the conclusion that Trump is soft on some of the world’s most brutal dictators, given the manner in which he has turned around US policy to accommodate North Korea’s Kim Un Sung, regarded not so long ago by Washington as a crackpot dictator who routinely starved and killed his own people.