REVIEW - EU's Discreet Stance On Khashoggi Case Shows Arms Sales To Riyadh Remain Crucial Priority

BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th October, 2018) The European Union's restrained response to the death of Saudi opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi has clearly indicated that most of European nations, just like the United States, are very reluctant to abandon their arms contracts with Riyadh even in the face of such an extraordinary case as the premeditated murder of a journalist in an embassy.

The case around the Khashoggi death continues making the headlines. On Monday, the Daily Express newspaper claimed, citing intelligence sources, that the United Kingdom was aware of Riyadh's alleged plans to capture Khashoggi for questioning and requested Saudi Arabia to cancel the mission, but the warning was ignored.

Asked why the UK Secret Intelligence Service had not notified its Five Eye intelligence partners in the United States, as Khashoggi was a US resident, the source reportedly said "a decision was taken that we'd done what we could."

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As official statements by some Western leaders have demonstrated, the reaction to the high-profile case is much defined by the scale of their countries' arms exports to Saudi Arabia. So far, only German Chancellor Angela Merkel has unequivocally pledged to stop all of Germany's arms exports to Riyadh until the killing of Khashoggi has been investigated, while the United States, Spain, and France said that they did not see the halt of arms contracts - which would come at a cost for their defense industries - as a good response.

Saudi Arabia indeed spends a lot on its "defense." The spending stands at the level of 2 billion Euros ($2.3 billion) a year. In 2016, a relatively small export year, Europe sold some 893.15 million euros worth of arms to the Saudis.

The largest exporter of arms to Saudi Arabia is the United States, the second is the United Kingdom and the third is France. Belgium's sales are also impressive, for the size of the country because of its FN Herstal small arms exports, while those of Germany are really small in comparison to the size of the German industry; the last German export was a series of speedboats.

"This explains why the only voice heard among heads of state to stop selling arms to the Saudis is that of Angela Merkel... [US President] Donald Trump has talked and tweeted too much as usual, voicing his embarrassment and making it clear that he did not want to discontinue the on-going military contracts. [Prime Minister] Theresa May for the UK, has the excuse of her difficult Brexit negotiations to remain silent in all languages," Pierre Henrot, a military expert from Brussels, told Sputnik.

UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, on his part, however, warned of "consequences to relations between London and Riyadh," saying that "this murder is a terrible act for which those responsible must be held to account."

Later, May did reiterate call on the Saudi authorities to hold those responsible for the journalist's murder accountable and added that those responsible for the murder would be banned from entering the United Kingdom. The UK Foreign Office said that it was "considering its next steps." Yet, no official statements on the halt of arms sales seemed to have followed.

Trade relations between the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia stretch back more than 60 years. The UK defense industry has probably been the most efficient, with BAE Systems at the helm, in forging tight ties with Riyadh. In 1985, the Saudis bought 72 Tornado jets, as well as training and support aircraft, plus maintenance. At the time, it was dubbed by the UK press the biggest sale of the United Kingdom ever. With its successive sales, the UK aircraft deals with Riyadh have reached close to 40 billion euros. The country delivers one fourth of all weapons systems that Saudi Arabia is buying.

Moreover, currently the two nations are involved in hammering out a deal on the sales of 48 Typhoons from the Lancashire-based BAE to Saudi Arabia.

It therefore comes as no surprise that London, if media reports are true, preferred to stay away from stepping in and only confined itself to warning Riyadh against implementing its plans to capture and question the journalist.

Paris, in contrast, preferred to speak up on the case, following the suit of the United States and Spain. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that he was against making decisions by impulse and that arms sales to Saudi Arabia had "nothing to do" with the Khashoggi murder.

France, whose 13.5 percent of arms exports come to Saudi Arabia, therefore does not want to cancel contracts with Riyadh. Macron's stance could also be connected with the 2015 Mistrals case, when Paris terminated the contract for helicopter carriers that were to be delivered to Russia amid the Ukraine crisis. These ships were finally sold to Egypt, but the operation was very expensive for France, also in terms of image as a reliable business partner.

Gilles Lebreton, the head of the French National Rally (RN) party's delegation in the European Parliament, slammed Paris' "friendship" with Saudi Arabia.

"For France, my party has always fought against the cozy so-called 'friendship' with Saudi Arabia because of the scandalous support of this country for Islamist terrorism and their support of the most backward version of islam in French mosques. From this point of view, the brutality of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi does not surprise us," Lebreton said.

He also expressed regret over London's reported failure to "warn its allies about the imminent Khashoggi assassination."

"Together, we could have rolled back the Saudis and the very probable author, MbS, the prince Mohammed bin Salman would have been stopped in time," he said, commenting on the latest reports.

Another possible explanation for the lack of a really strong response of Western nations to the Khashoggi murder is the false image created by the Western press around the Saudi journalist.

According to Henrot, Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, used to be linked to the late leader of al-Qaeda terrorist group (banned in Russia), Osama bin Laden, so he could hardly be regarded as a liberal journalist as presented by the Western media.

"For readers of the press in the West, Khashoggi was 'one of us,' a liberal, progressive journalist fighting for freedom and criticizing the hyper-conservative Saudi regime. Not so; in reality Khashoggi had fought in Afghanistan with Ben Laden, was an Islamist, sympathetic to the jihad, anti-Semite and member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is anathema in Saudi Arabia. So Khashoggi had lost all his contacts in the royal family in Riyad. Once close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), he had become an enemy of the Saudi regime," Henrot argued.

The expert suggested that Khashoggi's previous record might be "the reason why the British secret service did not care too much about what could happen in Istanbul."

"He was also used as a source by several intelligence agencies, but he should not be considered a sympathetic figure at all. That is maybe the reason why the British secret service did not care too much about what could happen in Istanbul. It also seems that what the Saudi goons were supposed to do was to bring Khashoggi back to Riyadh. The Western press has done some cover-up in this instance. You could call it fake news," he opined.

Janice Atkinson, the vice-chair of Europe of Nations and Freedom Group in the European Parliament, in turn described the campaign around the Khashoggi case as unprecedented, recalling that no death of any journalist had ever met a similar reaction.

"Yes, we should be outraged when any foreign citizen is murdered in another state but I haven't heard the outcries of the press when journalists were murdered by Iran or when Turkey's [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan shut down and took over the Turkish media. Turkey's holier-than-thou attitude in this instance is quite something!" she stressed.

Atkinson also shared the stance that Khashoggi could hardly fit in with the image of a true liberal opposition journalist created around him.

"What concerns me is that Khashoggi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the pernicious and dangerous group whose tentacles embrace our mosques, they are behind most acts of terrorism in Europe, but this is swept under the carpet. The UK and US should be looking into their practices and proscribe them as a terrorist organization," she argued.

Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist known for his criticism of Saudi policies, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

Following more than two weeks of denials, Saudi Arabia admitted on October 19 that the journalist had been killed in a brawl inside the consulate. According to Riyadh, 18 people have been arrested over their suspected involvement in the incident. On Thursday, the Saudi prosecutor general acknowledged that the journalist's murder had been orchestrated in advance. However, Riyadh maintains that the murder had nothing to do with the Saudi Royal family, describing it as a rogue operation.