A British government minister has confirmed he’s planning to attend the Davos in the Desert investment conference organised by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman next week on behalf of the UK, but he quickly shut down questions about the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi regime.
There’s been intense interest in who would agree to attend bin Salman’s Future Investment Initiative after many western leaders, business people, and media organisations boycotted last year’s conference over Khashoggi’s murder inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
A draft copy of this year’s conference attendee list, published by Axios on Wednesday, listed senior US administration officials such as Jared Kushner and Steven Mnuchin among the attendees, alongside David Cameron, Kevin Rudd, and Matteo Renzi, the former prime ministers of the UK, Australia, and Italy respectively.
The UK’s minister for investment Graham Stuart was also on the draft list, appearing on a panel called “Trading places: What new financial centers are rising up around the world?”
In a brief phone call with BuzzFeed News on Thursday morning, Stuart confirmed he was planning to attend the Riyadh conference on behalf of the UK government.
But when asked about whether he or the government had taken into account the murder of Khashoggi, Stuart replied, “I don’t want to go into that”, before asking to end the call.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Kevin Rudd said he was attending next week's conference because next year Saudi Arabia will host the gathering of world leaders for the G20 summit.
“All G20 heads of government will be attending the G20 summit in Saudi Arabia next year. As one of its co-founders, I have been asked to speak on how Saudi Arabia should best prepare for the financial and economic agenda for that summit.
“That is why I’m planning to attend the FII (Future Investment Initiative).”
Addressing whether he'd taken into account the murder of Khashoggi, Rudd added: “Attending G20 summits in the past has never equated with approval or disapproval of the policies of any particular host government.”
The US-based dissident journalist for the Washington Post was murdered and dismembered by Saudi agents in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul last year.
Months of investigations into the brazen incident led the United Nations expert on extrajudicial killings to conclude that 15 Saudi agents had used “state means to execute” Khashoggi.
“It was overseen, planned and endorsed by high-level officials,” the report by the UN’s special rapporteur concluded. “It was premeditated.”
In a US broadcast interview last month, bin Salman claimed to take “full responsibility” but denied ordering the killing. He called it a “heinous crime” committed by Saudi agents by “mistake”.
Khashoggi’s murder sparked a wave of denunciations of the Saudi crown prince in the days leading up to last year’s lavish conference. Many world leaders and organisations boycotted the conference, including then–UK trade secretary Liam Fox.
Western media organisations also pulled support. This year, the draft programme shows several Bloomberg journalists moderating panels at the event. But Bloomberg told Axios in a statement that it was not "sponsoring or participating in the program" and that it would be covering the conference for news.