By Steve Holland and Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday said he would not go forward with a civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia unless the Saudis agreed to a normalization in relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords.
The U.S. Department of Energy said on Wednesday that Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman had signed an agreement on developing the first commercial nuclear reactors in oil-rich Saudi Arabia and that it would next go to Congress for review.
Trump has been working since his first term on a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.
Former President Joe Biden also pushed for a deal and wanted to tie it to the accords, which would normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
But Saudi Arabia has not signed the accords because it wants an irreversible path to a Palestinian state before recognizing Israel.
On Thursday, Trump suddenly publicly added the condition to the deal, saying in a post on social media that Saudi Arabia would have to join the accords.
Trump emphasized that on Friday in the Oval Office. “In order to do it, they have to be a member of the Abraham Accords,” Trump told reporters. Trump said he did not talk about the accords with Wright before the Cabinet member signed the deal. “But it was always understood, and Chris knew, and Saudi Arabia knew,” Trump said.
Saudi Arabia has not responded to requests for comment about the additional condition to the deal.
Trump was confident that eventually it would come together. “At some point they’ll join …and they’ll do their civil, to echo it, civil nuclear,” Trump said.
A deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia is seen as benefiting Westinghouse, co-owned by Canadian companies Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management.
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Timothy Gardner;Editing by David Ljunggren and Alistair Bell)
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