Pompeo lands in Saudi Arabia for talks focused on Iran

RIYADH: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Riyadh Wednesday for talks with Saudi leaders focused on countering Tehran, his first visit since a top Iranian general´s killing sent regional tensions soaring.

The top US diplomat, whose visit follows his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa, will hold talks with King Salman and his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as well as Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, State Department officials said. “We’ll spend a lot of time talking about the security issues with the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular,” Pompeo told reporters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa before heading to Riyadh. Pompeo said the United States was “prepared to talk anytime” to Iran but emphasised that the Iranian regime has “got to fundamentally change their behaviour”. “The pressure campaign continues. It’s not just an economic pressure campaign, its diplomatic pressures, isolation through diplomacy as well,” he said. US President Donald Trump, who is closely allied with Saudi Arabia, in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear accord with Iran and imposed sweeping sanctions aimed at reducing Tehran´s regional clout.

Pompeo closes Africa tour with warning about China’s ‘empty promises’: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday closed a three-nation Africa tour with a thinly-veiled swipe at China as he talked up Washington´s ability to stimulate growth and entrepreneurship on the continent. “Countries should be wary of authoritarian regimes with empty promises. They breed corruption, dependency,” Pompeo said in a speech to diplomats and business leaders at the UN´s Economic Commission for Africa in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

“They run the risk that the prosperity and sovereignty and progress that Africa so needs and desperately wants won´t happen. Pompeo in his remarks did not explicitly mention China — Africa´s largest trading partner — but analysts predicted ahead of his trip that he would attempt to pitch the US as an alternative source of investment. On Wednesday Pompeo name-checked US companies operating in all three countries on his Africa tour, the first by a US cabinet-level official in 19 months: Bechtel in Senegal, Chevron in Angola and Coca-Cola in Ethiopia.