Pompeo meets Turkish President over missing Saudi journalist

Ankara, Oct. 17 (IANS): US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan here on Wednesday following his trip to Saudi Arabia to discuss the case of journalist Jamal Khashoggi who disappeared two weeks ago after entering his country’s consulate in Istanbul.

The meeting in Ankara came following the Turkish and the US media reports that Khashoggi was killed minutes after he arrived at the building for paperwork on October 2. The reports cited the Turkish officials as saying that there were audio recordings proving he was beaten and drugged, then brutally killed and dismembered.

Erdogan received Pompeo at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport in the morning and later Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the meeting between the President and the top US official had been “beneficial and fruitful”, the BBC reported.

Before Turkey, Pompeo was in Saudi Arabia for talks with King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. He said Saudi Arabia’s leaders “strongly denied” involvement in the journalist’s disappearance.

Saudi’s leadership told Pompeo it was committed to a full and transparent inquiry into Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Khashoggi was a permanent resident of the US in self-imposed exile who penned a column in the Washington Post and was a fierce critic of Riyadh’s human rights violations and of the Crown Prince’s policies.