Washington: The US last night formally approved defence contracts totalling more than $1 billion with Saudi Arabia, as the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman continued his American tour.
The State Department confirmed it had green-lighted a $670 million deal for anti-tank missiles, a $106m contract for helicopter maintenance and $300m for ground vehicle parts.
An official said the deals had been in the pipeline since President Donald Trump has announced more than $100bn in possible new contracts on a visit to Riyadh last year.
Crown Prince Mohammed also met US Defence Secretary James Mattis and discussed the destablising role of Iran in the region.
The Crown Prince, who is also Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, and Secretary Mattis also reviewed ways to bring an end to the war in Yemen as well as the progress in negotiations for peace in Afghanistan.
“This proposed sale will support US foreign policy and national security objectives by improving the security of a friendly country,” the US Defence Security Co-operation Agency said.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is part-way through a three-week tour of America that has already taken him to talks in Trump’s White House.
The largest of the three contracts is for 6,600 TOW 2B anti-tank missiles, made by US giant Raytheon.
The next biggest covers spare parts and maintenance for the Saudi ground forces’ pool of US-built Abram tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, LAV armoured vehicles, howitzers and Humvees.
The last continues a support contract for the Saudi fleet of AH-64D and E Apache attack helicopters, UK-60L Black Hawk utility choppers and Schweizer and Bell scouts.