Algeria president calls off meeting with Saudi crown prince

TRANS ASIA NEWS

Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika called off a meeting with visiting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday because of ill health, the national news agency APS reported.

It said the 81-year-old president, whose health has been fragile since he suffered a stroke in 2013 and is rarely seen in public, was "in bed with a heavy flu".

Prince Mohammed, more commonly known as MbS, who has been making his first foreign tour since the 2 October murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, held talks instead with Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, Algeria's presidency said.

The visit would focus on "partnerships and investment projects", the Algerian presidency said before the prince arrived in Algiers late on Sunday on a flight from Mauritania.

Like a previous stop in Tunis, the crown prince's visit has drawn criticism from political and academic circles in Algeria over the Saudi-led war in Yemen and Washington Post columnist Khashoggi's grisly murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

It was jointly denounced by 17 intellectuals, journalists, Muslim scholars and other figures in the North African country, in a statement obtained by AFP.

They said the "whole world is certain that he ordered a terrible crime against the journalist Jamal Khashoggi".

Algeria PM under fire for welcoming MbS

Meanwhile, Algeria's largest Islamic party, the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), criticized Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia for welcoming bin Salman, saying, "Those who roll out the red carpet for bin Salman do not care about Algeria."

MSP head Abderrazak Makri also accused Algerian politicians of being corrupted by Saudi money.

"Our rulers have destroyed the country's economy and then bin Salman drowned them in their financial crisis by reducing oil prices in response to [US President Donald] Trump's orders," he said. 

Abderrazak Makri, head of the Islamist Movement of Society for Peace, told reporters the crown prince's visit "does not serve Algeria's image nor its reputation". Among the signatories were writer and journalist Kamel Daoud and prominent novelist Rachid Boudjedra.

Khashoggi's killing has put mounting pressure on Riyadh and MbS, who Turkish officials - and reportedly the CIA - have concluded was behind the critic's death.

Saudi authorities have vehemently denied the crown prince was involved in the murder, although Riyadh has admitted he was killed at the Istanbul consulate. 

MbS has in recent days travelled to the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and Tunisia, before heading to Buenos Aires on Wednesday for the G20 summit.

Jordan visit delayed amid criticisms

In another development on Monday, sources told the Al Jazeera media network that bin Salman's visit to Jordan had been postponed by at least two days, without elaborating on the reason behind the delay.

The crown prince was initially scheduled to arrive in Amman on Monday.

Meanwhile, a broad spectrum of Jordanian activists, political parties and journalists formed a group against the Saudi crown prince's visit to the kingdom.

Murad Adaileh, secretary general of the Islamic Work Front, Jordan's largest political party, said that bin Salman's trip comes at a time when "the investigation of the death of Khashoggi is not over, and there are specific accusations that Prince Mohammed is involved in it."

"There is also general unhappiness about the Saudi position regarding the case of Palestine, and we reject any Saudi pressure of Jordan in this regard," Adaileh added.

Said Thiab, secretary general of the leftist al-Wihda Party, stressed that the group was opposed to Riyadh's policies, championed by bin Salman, including the normalization of ties with Israel.

The group, he noted, was also against "what Saudis are doing in terms of massacres in Yemen, the Arab Nato which was established by Saudis, and the search for another enemy as an alternative to Israel with Iran being pictured as the enemy."

Khashoggi's killing was an "ugly crime" that pushed Jordanians from all walks of life to oppose bin Salman's visit, he said.