US' Pompeo Arrives İn Saudi Arabia For Khashoggi Talks

By Viola Fahmy





U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday arrived in Saudi capital Riyadh for talks on the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.





Pompeo "was greeted by Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, [Saudi] Ambassador to the U.S. Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Director of Protocol Ambassador Azzam al-Qain," the Saudi Foreign Ministry said on Twitter.





Following his scheduled meeting with Saudi King Salman, Pompeo will visit Turkey on Wednesday to meet with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.





On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Pompeo was being dispatched to meet the Saudi king to discuss the disappearance of Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and columnist for the Washington Post newspaper.





Khashoggi has long been feared killed at the consulate after he entered on Oct. 2 and was never seen exiting.





Trump raised the possibility that "rogue killers" could have been responsible for Khashoggi's disappearance after speaking over the telephone with Saudi King Salman for 20 minutes on Monday.





Trump said Salman "firmly denies" any knowledge of Khashoggi's disappearance.





Earlier on Monday, Turkish and Saudi officials arrived at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul after the start of a joint probe into the missing journalist.





Saudi authorities have yet to give a clear explanation of what happened to Khashoggi, while several countries -- particularly Turkey, the U.S., and the U.K. -- are pressing for the mystery to be cleared up as soon as possible. -