Hisham places mending relationship with Saudi Arabia as a priority

As the country's new foreign affairs minister, Hishammuddin Hussein Onn has placed fixing the country's relationship with Saudi Arabia as a priority.

"One of the priorities is that we will correct our relationship with Saudi Arabia," he said during a welcoming ceremony for him today at Wisma Putra.

He said Prince Faisal Farhan of Saudi Arabia has also been invited to come to Malaysia to meet both him and his deputy Kamaruddin Jaafar.

He said he would speak with the prince as well as with his counterparts from five countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and China via phone calls today.

While Hishammuddin did not name the cause of the strained bilateral relationship between Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, it is believed linked to the organisation of Kuala Lumpur Summit in December 2019 by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

On Dec 17, Mahathir said he had clarified with King Salman Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia that the summit was not intended to create a new bloc to replace the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Elaborating further, Hishammuddin emphasised the need to balance what he termed as lopsided geopolitics in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world.

He vowed to put Malaysia back on the world map and said he wanted the country to fly high.

At a press conference later, he said he would also improve the country's relationship with India which is said to be planning to ban the import of palm oil from Malaysia.

India had urged its importers to boycott Malaysian palm oil following a diplomatic spat between the two nations triggered by Mahathir's comments on Kashmir.

"I am trying to manage that because we don't live on an island and Malaysia is a not a huge super power," said Hishammuddin.

"A small country can shake the world if we can (also) ensure those who are the shakers of the world are close to us," he said.

Meanwhile, he said the cabinet had decided to prioritise the Covid-19 outbreak in its meeting earlier today.

For this purpose, he said he would ask other countries hit by Covid-19 such as Singapore, Italy and China to share their experiences in handling the pandemic.

This would allow Malaysia to obtain the best practices from these countries, he said.

He said he believed this would beneficial to Malaysia in terms of the evacuation of its citizens from other countries as well as on the vaccine supply issue.

As of today, Malaysia recorded a total of 129 positive coronavirus cases of which 25 have recovered. Track the outbreak in Malaysia here.  - Mkini