British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thanked the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, for Saudi Arabia’s leadership of the G20 in “turbulent times.”
Saudi Arabia hosts the G20 summit Saturday and Sunday in a first for an Arab nation.
“I want to thank King Salman for the Kingdom’s leadership of the G20 in turbulent times,” said Johnson.
“It’s only by joining forces and working together that we will defeat coronavirus and build back better from this crisis,” Johnson said in a video message recorded for the G20 Riyadh Leaders’ Summit on Saturday.
“Our fates are in each other’s hands,” he added.
In his recorded video message for the G20, he said Saudi Arabia’s megacity NEOM “represents a greener future for all of us.”
Johnson called for fellow G20 leaders to work together on climate change ahead of next month’s Clime Ambition Summit and pointed to NEOM as a future model.
“And if we were in Saudi Arabia today, we may have visited, what I would have loved to have done, was to visit the exciting new city of Neom, whose origins I was able to inspect a couple of years ago,” said Johnson.
“Built on the sands of fossil fuels but powered by green hydrogen, under an enviable climate, an enviably reliable sun to provide just inexhaustible solar energy, that city, that vision of Neom represents a greener future for all of us,” he added.
At the summit, Johnson will also urge other G20 leaders to take more ambitious action to defeat the coronavirus pandemic.
