SECRETARY POMPEO: Mr. Khashoggi is missing
Remarks to Traveling Press
Remarks
Michael R. Pompeo
Secretary of State
Brussels International Airport
Brussels, Belgium
October 17, 2018
SECRETARY POMPEO: So let me just try and give you a summary of the short stay in Ankara.
Had a good, constructive conversation with President Erdogan. The fact that Pastor Brunson has now made his way back to the United States I think opens up lots of opportunities. We talked about half a dozen topics. We talked about Iran, how we have Iran sanctions taking place November 4th. We are working with the Turks to make sure that we get to the right place. They buy Iranian crude oil; we’d like them to buy less. And there are a whole handful of issues around that that we have working groups engaged in, and I think we made a little bit of progress on that this morning as well. We talked about the work that we’re doing together in Syria, and I think Ambassador Jeffrey had a chance to talk with you all about that, so I won’t spend a lot of time on that. But President Erdogan is fully engaged in ensuring that Idlib Province remain inside the agreement that he struck, and we are hopeful that that will remain the case as well.
We talked about the Khashoggi incident as well. He made clear that the Saudis had cooperated with the investigation that the Turks are engaged in, and that they’re going to share information that they learned with the Saudis as well. There’s been a couple of delays, but they seemed pretty confident that the Saudis were going to permit them to do the things that they needed to do to complete their thorough and complete investigation as well.
QUESTION: Sanctions on – Brunson-related sanctions, are you ready to lift those?
SECRETARY POMPEO: So we’ll have a decision on that shortly. But there were – some of the sanctions that were put in place were directly connected to Pastor Brunson, and there’s a logic to now removing those as well. But no final decision has been made. I need to talk to the President about that.
But we did talk – we talked about that set of sanctions. We talked about work that we were doing in other places together as well.
QUESTION: Did you learn anything concrete about what they learned about – anything new they learned about Khashoggi?
SECRETARY POMPEO: No. They want to complete their investigation, and that they will have a process. I’m sure they will have their own prosecutors looking at this as well since it took place in their country, albeit on consulate property.
QUESTION: Have you heard or asked to hear the alleged audio on the actual murder?
SECRETARY POMPEO: I don’t have anything to say about that.
QUESTION: Do you believe that there actually was an incident that took place in the consulate after your talks here in Turkey?
SECRETARY POMPEO: Mr. Khashoggi is missing.
QUESTION: And do we think he’s missing from the consulate? Is that –
continued at:
https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2018/10/286716.htm