Saudi Arabia's new foreign minister struck a note of defiance Friday in the face of international outrage over critic Jamal Khashoggi's murder, saying the kingdom was not in crisis.

"The issue of Jamal Khashoggi... really saddened us, all of us," Ibrahim al-Assaf told AFP, a day after he was appointed foreign minister in a government reshuffle.

"But all in all, we are not going through a crisis, we are going through a transformation.

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