Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has requested to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the upcoming two-day G20 summit in Argentina, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

“Yes, he has asked Erdogan on the phone, whether they could meet in Buenos Aires. Erdogan’s answer was ‘Let’s see’,” Cavusoglu told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview published on Tuesday.

“At the moment there is no reason not to meet with the crown prince,” Cavusoglu said, adding that the request was made during a phone call.

Erdogan and Prince Mohammed, commonly known by his initials MBS, will attend the G20 meeting in the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires, on November 30-December 1.

The relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been strained by the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month.

After offering numerous contradictory explanations, Riyadh finally admitted that Khashoggi had been killed and his body dismembered in a “rogue operation”.

Riyadh has repeatedly said Prince Mohammed had no knowledge of the killing, which Turkey says was carried out at the kingdom’s consulate by a 15-member hit squad with links to MBS’s security team.

Erdogan has said the killing was ordered by the highest level of Saudi leadership but ruled out that it had come from Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, putting the spotlight instead on the 33-year-old crown prince.

United States President Donald Trump said last week Washington would remain a “steadfast partner” of Saudi Arabia despite saying that Prince Mohammed may have known about the plan to murder Khashoggi.

‘Why identikit pictures?’ 

Asked if he knew for sure who in Riyadh gave the order to kill Khashoggi, Cavusoglu said that the team would not have acted on its own, but could not say anything else without proof.

Cavusoglu said Riyadh had offered to send identikit photos of local helpers who assisted in the cover-up. “Why identikit pictures? The Saudis know the names,” he said.

Turkey says it has recordings related to the killing which it shared with Western allies. Cavusoglu said he had listened to the recordings and that Khashoggi was killed within seven minutes.

“It was premeditated murder,” he told the German newspaper, rather than a last resort after they failed to convince him to return to Saudi Arabia.

“It can be heard how the forensics expert instructs the others: they should listen to music while he cuts up the body. One notices how he enjoys it.”

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU) may hamper trade between Washington and London.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump said the deal that May struck with Brussels “sounds like a great deal” for the EU.

“I think we have to take a look at, seriously, whether or not the UK is allowed to trade, because you know right now, if you look at the deal, they may not be able to trade with us,” he said.

“That wouldn’t be a good thing. I don’t think they meant that, I don’t think the prime minister meant that, and hopefully she’ll be able to do something about that,” Trump said.

May’s office rejected the statement saying that the agreement allowed the UK to sign trade deals with countries around the world, including the US.

“We have already been laying the groundwork for an ambitious agreement with the US through our joint working groups, which have met five times so far,” said a spokesperson for the office.

On Sunday, the 27-member bloc approved the withdrawal agreement and political declaration on the future EU-UK relations.

A very turbulent period now lies before the members of Britain’s parliament, as they will vote on the deal in the coming weeks.

On Monday, May made a blunt appeal to sceptical lawmakers to back the deal: It isn’t perfect, but it’s all there is, and the alternative is a leap into the unknown.

In essence, she urged parliament: Let’s agree and move on, for the sake of the voters.

December 11 vote

May confirmed that British lawmakers will vote on December 11, after several days of debate, on whether to approve or reject the agreement.

Scores of legislators – from both the opposition and May’s governing Conservative Party – have vowed to oppose it.

Rejection would plunge Britain into a political crisis and potential financial turmoil just weeks before it is due to leave the EU on March 29.

“No one knows what would happen if this deal didn’t pass,” May told the House of Commons.

“Our duty as a parliament over these coming weeks is to examine this deal in detail, to debate it respectfully, to listen to our constituents and decide what is in our national interest.”

Before then, May plans a frantic two-week cross-country campaign to convince both the public and lawmakers that the deal delivers on voters’ decision in 2016 to leave the EU “while providing a close economic and security relationship with our nearest neighbours”.

But May’s defence of her hard-won deal in parliament was followed by a torrent of criticism, from hard-core Brexit-backers, pro-EU lawmakers and previously loyal backbenchers alike.

During Monday’s debate in parliament, legislators again expressed their deep unease, if not hatred, of the deal that keeps Britain outside the EU with no say, but still subject to the rules and the obligations of membership at least until the end of 2020 while a permanent new relationship is worked out.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said the “botched deal” would leave Britain worse off, with “no say over EU rules and no certainty for the future”.

“Plowing on is not stoic. It’s an act of national self-harm,” he said.

US President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort has been accused of breaching a plea deal by lying to federal prosecutors, signalling a potential setback to the special counsel’s probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In a court filing on Monday, lawyers working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the alleged Russian interference said Manafort had nullified their agreement to cooperate – charges denied by the 69-year-old.

In the latest filing, Mueller’s team said Manafort “committed federal crimes” by lying about “a variety of subject matters” even after he agreed to truthfully cooperate with the investigation, which has been ongoing since 2017.

Prosecutors said they will detail the “nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies” in writing at a later date to the judge.

Manafort, who pleaded guilty in September, denied lying and breaching his plea agreement, saying he “believes he provided truthful information” during a series of sessions with Mueller’s investigators.

But both sides agreed the court should move ahead and sentence him for his crimes.

The surprise development comes at a critical time for Mueller, who is expected to finalise a report in the coming months on the findings of his 18-month probe into Russia’s election meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.

While not a fatal blow, the dissolution of Manafort’s plea agreement means Mueller is losing the contributions of a witness with deep ties to Russia and who ran the Trump campaign as it took off in mid-2016.

“It’s bad for the overall Mueller investigation,” Patrick Cotter, a criminal defence lawyer in Chicago and former assistant US attorney in New York, told Reuters news agency. “He’s got one less witness today.”

Ethical line

Manafort, who remains jailed, had been meeting with the special counsel’s office since he pleaded guilty in September to a conspiracy against the United States – a charge that included a range of conduct from money laundering to unregistered lobbying. He also admitted that he tried to tamper with witnesses.

He cut that deal to head off a second trial after being convicted last summer of eight felony counts related to millions of dollars he hid from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in offshore accounts.

Manafort already faces up to five years in prison on the two charges in his plea agreement. In his separate Virginia case, Manafort’s potential sentencing under federal guidelines has not yet been calculated, but prosecutors have previously said he could face as much as 10 years in prison on those charges.

Manafort was a long-time Republican political consultant who made tens of millions of dollars working for pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine before joining the Trump campaign in March 2016, promising to work for free.

Manafort attended a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a group of Russians offering “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who lost in an upset to Trump in the vote that November.

His long-standing relationship with an oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin was another reason Manafort’s cooperation was seen as important to Mueller’s probe.

Manafort’s lawyers said he met the government on several occasions and made “an effort to live up to his cooperation obligations,” according to Monday’s joint filing, which was submitted to US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington.

Rudy Giuliani, who represents Trump in the Russia probe, said Mueller’s team had crossed an ethical line between the search for the truth and exerting too much pressure on Manafort.

“They are trying not to get a witness to sing, but to compose,” he said in an interview with Reuters on Monday night.

Mueller, a lawyer and the head of the FBI from 2001 to 2003, was appointed as special counsel to the US Justice Department to investigate possible Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election on May 17.