Saudi crown prince snubbed in Algeria

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has postponed a planned visit to Jordan after getting the cold shoulder in Algeria, where President Abdelaziz Bouteflika scrapped a meeting with him, citing flu.

Bin Salman, who has been struggling over the past weeks to distance himself from a scandal over the gruesome murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, arrived in Algeria late Sunday for a two-day visit following a stop in Mauritania.

The trip is part of a tour of Arab countries that the Saudi crown prince has resumed after attending the G20 summit in Argentina on the weekend. He traveled to the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and Tunisia before the event.

Bin Salman’s visits have been overshadowed by Khashoggi’s assassination inside Riyadh’s Istanbul consulate in early October – which have been ordered by the prince – as well as the bloody war he has been leading against Yemen since early 2015.

Louisa Hanoune, head of Algeria’s opposition Workers’ Party, described bin Salman’s trip as a “provocation.”

In another development on Monday, sources told the Al Jazeera media network that bin Salman’s visit to Jordan had been postponed by at least two days, without elaborating on the reason behind the delay. The crown prince was initially scheduled to arrive in Amman on Monday.

Meanwhile, a broad spectrum of Jordanian activists, political parties and journalists formed a group against the Saudi crown prince’s visit to the kingdom.

Murad Adaileh, secretary general of the Islamic Work Front, Jordan’s largest political party, said that bin Salman’s trip comes at a time when “the investigation of the death of Khashoggi is not over, and there are specific accusations that Prince Mohammad is involved in it.”

“There is also general unhappiness about the Saudi position regarding the case of Palestine, and we reject any Saudi pressure of Jordan in this regard,” Adaileh added.

Said Thiab, secretary general of the leftist al-Wihda Party, stressed that the group was opposed to Riyadh’s policies, championed by bin Salman, including the normalization of ties with the Zionist regime of Israel.

The group, he noted, was also against “what Saudis are doing in terms of massacres in Yemen, and the search for another enemy as an alternative to Israel with Iran being pictured as the enemy.”

Khashoggi’s killing was an “ugly crime” that pushed Jordanians from all walks of life to oppose bin Salman’s visit, he said.

EA