RIYADH, 22 May 2003 — Visiting Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer held talks here yesterday with his counterpart Prince Saud Al-Faisal on regional and international issues. The two ministers discussed “bilateral ties and ways of improving them, and exchanged views about regional and international issues,” the Saudi Press Agency said without giving details.
The visit comes a week after three suicide bombings against expatriate residential compounds in Riyadh killed 34 people, including one Australian. But Australia has decided not to follow the United States, Britain, Canada and Germany in closing its embassy here.
