A day in Dubai, an evening in Doha and an afternoon in Jeddah. At the charge, Emmanuel Macron made it his duty to visit, in two days, the three neighbors of the Gulf, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
After the sale of 80 Rafale to the Emirates, the highlight of the trip, also the most contested by human rights defenders, will remain his visit to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed Ben Salman, known as “MBS”. The two leaders met on Saturday, December 4 in Jeddah, then had lunch together in a royal palace in this large port on the west coast of the peninsula. For the occasion, the journalists had been kept away, confined in the residence of the French consul. The Saudis had only accepted the presence, at the very beginning of the meeting, of a television crew and a French photographer.
So goes the “normalization” of relations between France and Saudi Arabia, three years after the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a crime in which the Saudi dolphin is involved according to various damning reports, including an investigation by the American CIA . The affair is still worth to the strong man of Riyadh a sulphurous reputation, and an international isolation that the French president chose to break, to the chagrin of human rights organizations.
At the end of their interview, during a quick press point at the airport just before taking off for Paris, Mr. Macron assured to have “Talked about everything, absolutely without any taboos” with his interlocutor during an exchange “Direct” and ” effective “ on human rights issues, but without mentioning the name of the former chronicler of the Washington post assassinated in the grounds of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (Turkey), in October 2018.
“New opportunities”
Mr. Macron also did not mention the murderous war in Yemen where the Saudis have been trying for six years to crush the pro-Iranian Houthi rebellion, in coalition with the Emiratis. The day before the meeting, a complaint had also been filed in Paris against the leaders of the two countries, for ” war crime “, and “Terrorist financing”.
In this context, the Elysée has also remained discreet about the various agreements signed by several French companies, including Safran, Airbus and Véolia. “The time is no longer to display a harvest of contracts, as in the time of Sarkozy”, said a businessman present in the official delegation, “This was not necessarily convincing and displeased customers from the Gulf”. Another considers that the American obsession with China, against a backdrop of soaring oil prices, “Does offer new opportunities” to European and French groups, in this country considered a privileged partner of Washington. Without forgetting that Joe Biden continues, him, not to speak to the Saudi heir.
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