Saudi’s MbS will not attend Russia’s BRICS summit
MOSCOW (Reuters) -Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is not expected to attend a Russian-hosted BRICS summit later this month, according to the Kremlin, which said the world’s biggest oil exporter would be represented by the kingdom’s foreign minister.
The BRICS group originally consisted of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and has expanded to include Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and others.
President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said that nine of the 10 BRICS member states would send their leaders, though Saudi Arabia would send its foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, to the summit in the Russian city of Kazan.
He did not give a reason for the expected absence of the crown prince, known as MbS. Russia has invited Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to attend the summit, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said last month.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters in January that Riyadh was still considering the invitation to join BRICS.
One of them said there were strong benefits to joining the bloc. A Saudi official source told Reuters in February that the kingdom had not yet responded to the invitation to join and that it was still under consideration.
The kingdom’s warming ties with Beijing have caused concern in Washington, its longtime ally, with which ties have sometimes been strained in recent years.
Ushakov said “BRICS is a structure that cannot be ignored”, while adding that the West was putting pressure on countries not to join the organization.
He also said BRICS members accounted for 45% of the world’s population, about 40% of oil production and about a quarter of global goods exports.
The term BRIC was coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill in 2003 to describe how the four rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are likely to rival and overtake many of the West’s leading economies over the next half century.
In the two decades since then, the group has formed into an official structure though its economic weight is largely made up by China, the world’s second largest economy, and critics say the major members of the grouping have contradictory aims.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, additional reporting by Maha El Dahan in Duba; writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by David Evans)
