Washington, July 23 (IANS) US President Donald Trump will approve a civil nuclear energy agreement with Saudi Arabia only if Riyadh joins the Abraham Accords and normalises relations with Israel, the White House said Thursday.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at a news conference that the proposed agreement would bar Saudi Arabia from enriching nuclear material and would cover only non-military uses. She said negotiations remained underway.
“The civil nuclear deal, there will be no enrichment of material, an important point being made between the Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” Leavitt said, reading from a social media post by Trump.
“The United States is not opposed to civil nuclear facilities,” Trump said in the post, according to Leavitt.
The announcement placed a major new political condition on an energy agreement that had been announced a day earlier by Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Asked why the requirement was not mentioned when Wright announced the agreement, Leavitt said Trump had raised it on several previous occasions.
“The president is always the final dealmaker, as you know,” she said. “He has said if they don’t join the Abraham Accords, the deal is off.”
Leavitt said Trump wanted more Gulf and Arab countries to establish diplomatic relations with Israel as part of his broader effort to expand the agreements negotiated during his first term.
“This is a condition that the president has spoken about many times with our Gulf and Arab allies,” she said. “He wants to see these countries sign the Abraham Accord.”
The agreement with Saudi Arabia “is contingent on this condition as far as the president is concerned”, she added.
The White House gave no indication that Saudi Arabia had accepted the condition. Leavitt said Trump had discussed the issue with Saudi leaders in previous conversations, but she did not believe he had spoken to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after issuing Thursday’s statement.
“The administration will continue to engage in those conversations,” she said.
Saudi Arabia has previously linked normalisation with Israel to progress towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. Asked why the administration believed Riyadh might change its position, Leavitt declined to discuss Trump’s diplomatic exchanges.
“This is something that he feels very strongly about and has spoken about it in the past and will continue to uphold,” she said.
Leavitt also declined to say whether Saudi nuclear facilities would be exempt from international inspections, saying she did not want to discuss the details while the agreement was still being negotiated.
She said the proposed arrangement would give US companies priority access to Saudi Arabia’s nuclear energy programme.
The agreement “will ultimately benefit American industry workers and supply chain”, Leavitt said. “The deal that has been discussed thus far and will continue to be discussed absolutely puts America first.”
Asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had requested that Saudi entry into the Abraham Accords be made a condition, Leavitt said: “Not to my knowledge, no.”
She said the proposal came from Trump, whose administration brokered the Abraham Accords during his first term.
–IANS
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