Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni began a surprise visit to Saudi Arabia on Friday as part of a Gulf tour to boost \u201cnational energy security,\u201d a government source said, as the Middle East war rages.<\/p>\n
Meloni began her unannounced trip in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, the source said, adding that she was the first leader of a European Union or Nato country to visit the region since the war began on Feb.28.<\/p>\n
The source said the far-right premier would meet officials from Saudi Arabia, as well as from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, though it was not immediately clear if she would also visit those two countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe aim is to strengthen relations with these countries and repeat Italy\u2019s support against Iranian attacks,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East war during a phone call on Friday, the Kremlin said.<\/p>\n
Erdogan told \u200cPutin that \u200cTurkey was maintaining contacts with all parties to stop the Iran war spiralling \u200bmore out of \u200ccontrol, Erdogan\u2019s office said. It cited Erdogan as telling Putin that \u200bTurkey \u200cdoes \u200cnot approve of the attacks against \u200cIran, nor \u200cdoes it endorse \u200cIran\u2019s retaliation against regional countries.<\/p>\n
Putin and Erdogan also discussed “the importance of coordinated measures to comprehensively ensure security in the Black Sea area,” Kremlin said, accusing Ukraine of “attempts to target gas transportation infrastructure linking Russia and Turkey.”<\/p>\n
EX-FM URGES PEACE DEAL: Writing in the US journal Foreign Affairs, Iran\u2019s former foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Tehran should make a deal with the United States to end the war by offering to curb its nuclear programme and reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni began a surprise visit to Saudi Arabia on Friday as part of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[7105,2313,7241,273,7106,7243,7099,7244,377,334,7239,7240,7242],"class_list":{"0":"post-7388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-giorgia-meloni","8":"tag-begins","9":"tag-ceasefire","10":"tag-erdogan","11":"tag-giorgia-meloni","12":"tag-gulf","13":"tag-immediate","14":"tag-italian","15":"tag-mideast","16":"tag-pm","17":"tag-putin","18":"tag-surprise","19":"tag-tour","20":"tag-urge"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116342627014353719","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}