Manama: Saudi Arabia has denied reports its new foreign minister Adel Al Jubeir has made statements about relations with Iran.
“With reference to fabricated press reports circulated on some websites quoting Foreign Minister Adel Al Jubeir as making statements on relations with Iran, the minister did not make any remarks to any media outlet since assuming office,” a statement from Osama Nogale, Head of the Information Department at the Foreign Ministry, said.
“There is not a single iota of truth in what has been attributed to him,” the statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said on Saturday.
Reports posted mainly on pro-Iranian sites claimed that Al Jubeir told his aides at his first meeting with them that he was ready to fly to Iran to discuss several issues, including the situation in Yemen.
The reports alleged that Al Jubeir who was appointed minister of foreign affairs on April 29 said that the only option with Iran was to sit with its officials and start direct negotiations and dialogues with them in order to settle the disputes that rose in recent years.
Iran is capable of solving all the pending issues in the region, including the crisis in Lebanon and the issues among Palestinian factions and between ministers in Afghanistan, the report claimed the Saudi minister said.
In 2011, the United States accused Iranian officials of plotting to murder Al Jubeir, then Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, in a scheme involving an Iranian-American used-car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million.
Manssor Arbabsiar, the Iranian-American who pleaded guilty to participating in the plot by recruiting the drug cartel to bomb a Washington restaurant where Al Jubeir dined, was in 2013 sentenced to 25 years in prison.
