Macron to visit Saudi Arabia before the end of the year

Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron is expected to visit Saudi Arabia before the end of the year, according to a statement released by Élysée Palace.
During talks on Sunday, which lasted three hours, Macron assured Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that France was an ally of the Kingdom.
The statement said the fruitful discussions enhanced a personal understanding between the two leaders, further cementing the strong bilateral relations.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is expected to sign a "strategic partnership" with Macron in the Élysée Palace on Tuesday. France is hoping to profit from the Kingdom's Vision 2030 to forge a new kind of commercial relationship. 
Macron spent an hour on Sunday night taking the crown prince around one of the highlights of the current Paris cultural diary: a new exhibition by the revolutionary 19th-century French painter Eugene Delacroix.
The two men later dined together at a restaurant at the museum, spending two hours in talks that were expected to have covered wars and crises in the Middle East, as well as sources of friction between the leaders.
“The president wanted to host him for a private dinner at the Louvre, a top French cultural destination, on the occasion of the launch of the Delacroix exhibition,” an aide to Macron told reporters on Monday.
Delacroix was “known notably for the famous painting of Liberty Leading The People,” the aide stressed.
To underline the point further, Macron later tweeted a picture of him and Prince Mohammed in front of the giant canvas.
He added that the Louvre visit was in keeping with Macron’s intellectual approach to diplomacy and stressed a message about France’s cultural power as well as political reform.
Prince Mohammed has begun a series of social reforms to spread a more moderate version of Islamic law in his country.
A source in the Saudi delegation said the visit was proposed by Macron’s office after Prince Mohammed canceled a proposed trip to Marseille for a different cultural event.
The tour of the Louvre chimed with one of the main themes of his three-day trip to France, the source added, which is increasing cultural cooperation between the two countries that will see them work on a new Saudi orchestra and opera.