{"id":19738,"date":"2018-10-25T04:24:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T04:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19738"},"modified":"2018-10-25T04:24:47","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T04:24:47","slug":"under-pressure-over-khashoggi-killing-mbs-praises-qatar-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19738","title":{"rendered":"Under pressure over Khashoggi killing, MBS praises Qatar economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman<\/a> has praised Qatar’s economy, a rare conciliatory remark about the Gulf state that his country has been blockading since June 2017.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the\u00a0Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, the de-facto Saudi leader said: “Qatar, despite the differences we have, has a great economy and they will be doing a lot in the next five years.”<\/p>\n

The comments were made during a segment about economic potential in Saudi Arabia<\/a> and neighbouring Middle Eastern countries.<\/p>\n

He also claimed the “new Europe would be here in the Middle East”, alluding to the region’s economic promise.<\/p>\n

Bin Salman is one of the key figures behind a land, sea, and air blockade of Qatar<\/a>, along with the leaders of the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt.<\/p>\n

The bloc accuses Qatar of supporting groups they have banned, such as the Muslim Brotherhood<\/a>, as well as supporting terrorism.<\/p>\n

Qatar rejects any accusation that it supports terrorism as baseless.<\/p>\n

As a result of the blockade, Qatar’s only land border with Saudi Arabia was closed off, and the blockading countries shut off airspace to traffic entering and leaving the country.<\/p>\n

The Gulf state has largely weathered the embargo and established new trade relationships as a result, helped by vast foreign currency reserves and healthy demand for its liquified natural gas.<\/p>\n

The Saudi crown prince has been under considerable pressure recently in light of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi<\/a> in Istanbul by an 18-man Saudi hit squad on October 2.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia claims the killing was a kidnap operation gone wrong but suspicions linger around bin Salman’s possible role in the murder and whether the Washington Post columnist’s death was intentional.<\/p>\n

At Wednesday’s forum, the crown prince said the Khashoggi case was “painful” and “justice will prevail”.<\/p>\n

Calling Khashoggi’s murder a “heinous crime that cannot be justified”, he said all culprits will be punished, and promised Saudi Arabia and Turkey will work together “to reach results”.<\/p>\n

He said the killing of the journalist will not “drive a wedge” between the kingdom and Turkey.<\/p>\n

“We will cooperate with Turkey to discover the truth behind Khashoggi\u2019s killing,” the Saudi crown prince said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has praised Qatar’s economy, a rare conciliatory remark about the Gulf state that his country has been blockading since June 2017. Speaking at the\u00a0Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh on Wednesday, the de-facto Saudi leader said: “Qatar, despite the differences we have, has a great economy and they will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}