Donald and Melania Trump leave the Elysee after talks and lunch with Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron.
US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron both want to get “greater detail” about the events surrounding Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, a French presidential spokesman said following a meeting between the pair.
However, neither leader wants to do anything that could destabilize Saudi Arabia, the spokesman said at a briefing following the leaders’ bilateral talks Saturday in Paris.
Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and Washington Post columnist, was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2.
Both leaders agreed “something very serious happened — that this assassination was serious and unacceptable,” the French presidential spokesman said.
However, he added, the United States considers Saudi Arabia to be the “cornerstone of everything in the Middle East” and Washington won’t want to destabilize things.
The leaders did not discuss what should happen to the culprits, the spokesman noted, describing it as an “internal Saudi matter.”
Earlier Saturday, Turkey’s President said that recordings related to Khashoggi’s killing had been passed to some other countries -– including the United States and France.
The US President and first lady are in Paris for events to mark the centennial of the Armistice that ended World War I.
