Yes yeah, just to be clear I mean we are showing you an offset box as we call it,
but effectively these are pictures of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he has
arrived in Riyadh, where he is set to meet with King Salman over the disappearance
of Jamal Khashoggi amid heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia now
and a number of Western powers and, you know, I was in Bali at the IMF Meetings
and Treasury secretary Mnuchin said he clearly intends to attend
the FII event, the so-called Davos in the desert event that has become
a locus of anger, effectively for those who are concerned about the disappearance
of this journalist so as this crisis has escalated, the American administration
has chosen now to send in Mike Pompeo, who I believe will then be heading on to
Turkey after this meeting to try and bring some clarity in this situation
You're absolutely right, this FII this so- called Davos of the desert, actually, I hate
to add the World Economic Forum say this is not an event of ours, so there's
a clear delineation between what WEF does and Davos and this as well,
as you rightly say, it has become a lightning rod for people to show
whether they're still on board with the Saudi story or actually they need to take
take a temporary step back and in many cases I think we do believe it will be a
temporary step back. I think you have actually initiated a very good
conversation, once again, of course, today but by talking about longer-term issues
like the Magnitsky act as well and I added into that for my part, the OPEC
legislation as well so there are multiple areas including class action
potentially, if ever Aramco got to a U.S. listing as well, so there are many areas
Magnitsky, OPEC, the class action around Aramco so many areas which are
long-standing thorns and potential areas of seeds of discontent, which could grow
in accompanying of this Khashoggi story.
And what we've seen, domestically, interestingly around, this is a bipartisan
approach from senators who have sent a letter expressing their
concern about what is happening in this story, so the issue I mean so often,
these international issues end up polarizing the Republicans who support
Trump, the Republicans who don't support Trump and the Democrats, of course, who
would like to see a very clear outcome in the midterm elections but on this
particular issue that does seem to be an element of unity of bipartisan support.
Hadley is in Riyadh for us covering on off this story and Hadley, just bring
us up to speed on the latest you're hearing, I know there's been a lot of
speculation that we will get a statement now from the Saudi government, suggesting
that this was a rogue interrogation that went wrong.
Hey good morning guys so you're just seeing live pictures there of US Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo sitting with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir
and of course this is a government in Saudi Arabia that's been pretty silent
over the last couple of weeks as these investigations have been going forward,
they issued a statement over the weekend in appreciation essentially
of the US and other countries for allowing them to continue with this investigation
before jumping to any conclusions of course we've seen over the last 24 hours
the story continuing to develop quite rapidly and of course President Trump
yesterday really suggesting that rogue elements might be involved in the
disappearance and potential death of course of Jamal Khashoggi, now I think
it's gonna be interesting over the next several hours to hear more from Saudi
officials as well as Mike Pompeo potentially, as to exactly what happened
in the Istanbul consulate some two weeks ago and of course as you were
just saying this does have major implications for what's happening in
the United States particularly, surrounding the midterms and the congressional
support that we've seen for president Trump. President Trump really did tie the
administration to the Saudis from day one, I mean he made Saudi Arabia the
first foreign trip of the presidency and I think that's at something that worked
certainly for MBS in terms of his Saudi vision and really bringing on all of
these international CEOs and gaining American support in the beginning but of
course, you know always there are two sides to every story and certainly with
what's been happening over the last several days in particular, regarding
this controversy with the moral outrage that we've continued to see from the
international community and certainly from the CEOs who dropped out of the FII,
the Davos in the desert that's expected still to take place just a few days from
now, a lot of questions surrounding whether or not that moral outrage
is going to continue with these global corporates, but also of course, what's
going to happen next in terms of the political ramifications of any deal,
or any explanation that we're going to see coming from Saudi Arabia later today guys.