At his meeting with the Saudi heir to the throne Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he also mentioned the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “We have discussed all questions that revolve around questions of civil and human rights,” said the SPD politician after the meeting in response to a reporter’s question. “That’s the way it should be. And you can be sure that there’s nothing left unspoken that needs to be said.” Freedom of expression was also a topic of discussion. However, Scholz did not give any details.
The crown prince is being held responsible by US intelligence for the brutal killing of the Saudi government critic in the country’s consulate general in Istanbul four years ago. The heir to the throne denies being the mastermind. The murder had led to Mohammed bin Salman’s international isolation and severely cooled German-Saudi relations. Since the start of the Ukraine war, however, the Gulf monarchy in the West has gained new esteem in view of the lack of Russian oil and gas supplies.
Airbus, ThyssenKrupp, SiemensEnergy…
Scholz, who is accompanied by a top-class business delegation, is planning a close energy partnership with Saudi Arabia. This should not only extend to fossil raw materials, but also to hydrogen and renewable energies, as the Chancellor explained after the reception in the Royal Palace of Peace. The encounter with the crown prince began with a strong handshake, which symbolized the normalization of relations.
In the Gulf, Scholz is looking for a trail between Europe’s new thirst for energy and the warnings from human rights activists
Scholz dodged the question of whether Mohammed bin Salman had asked him to relax the German arms export regulations. “Everyone knows that we are pursuing a very strict policy here. And in line with these rules, decisions have been made in recent years that have been well considered. And we will continue to make well-considered decisions,” he said.
Big Five times two
According to research by the peace research institute SIPRI, the kingdom is one of the five largest arms importers in the world, while Germany is one of the five largest exporters. Under the traffic light government, however, not a single export to the Saudis was approved. The reason is an arms export ban that has been in effect since November 2018 because of Riyadh’s involvement in the war in neighboring Yemen and because of the Khashoggi murder. The red-green-yellow coalition no longer made use of an exception rule for European joint projects.
Scholz did not say whether the German arms export ban was discussed under the portrait of King Salman
For the United Arab Emirates, the German head of government’s next travel destination, a response from the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology to a request from the Left Party lists ten permits worth a good 219,000 euros. For Qatar, which has also been widely criticized for its human rights situation – which Scholz then visits – the department of Green politician Robert Habeck states 46 individual permits. The total value of the armaments delivered there was therefore 20.7 million euros.
Left-wing member of the Bundestag Sevim Dagdelen described Scholz as a “salesman” with a “shabby double standard”. Although the federal government no longer wants oil and gas from Russia, it is now banking “on energy deals with bloody dictatorships in the Gulf.” Dagdelen fears, in his own words, that the visit to the three countries “threatens to pave the way for new arms deliveries.”
jj/kle (dpa, afp, rtr)
