embassy

Dec. 3 (UPI) — Approval for a huge 215,000 sq. ft. Chinese “super embassy” in central London was postponed for a third time at the last minute, but was expected to get the go ahead in January after the government determined it was not a threat to national security.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government had been due to announce its decision Dec. 10, but said Tuesday that it needed more time, prompting protests from Chinese diplomats.

The final decision, more than three years after Tower Hamlets council refused to grant planning permission, was now due Jan. 20, ahead of a planned three-day visit by Prime Minister Keir Starmer to Beijing, the first by a British leader since 2018.

The move, overriding security concerns and local opposition to the facility, combining seven existing diplomatic sites dotted around London into a single embassy on the site of the former Royal Mint near Tower Bridge, came after the MI5 and MI6 assessed any risks were manageable.

Opponents argued the facility in the heart of the British capital, close to its financial district, and in particular its proximity to critical fiber-optic networks, would be a prime center for Chinese spying and surveillance operations, pursuing dissidents, or worse.

Local people were also opposed, in part, due to concerns about protests, while activists pointed to human rights issues in Hong Kong and Xinjiang province.

However, a spokesman for Starmer argued the reality was that the new embassy had significant security benefits for the United Kingdom.

“An independent planning decision will be made by the secretary of state for Housing, Communities and Local Government in due course,” said the spokesman. “Should the planning decision for a new embassy in the London borough of Tower Hamlets be approved, the new embassy will replace seven different sites which currently comprise China’s diplomatic footprint in London which clearly brings security advantages.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, said they had “carefully considered” all the issues and had worked with police and others to ensure national security concerns had been addressed.”

However, they said they recognized “the importance of countries having functioning diplomatic premises in each other’s capitals.”

The new delay through next month was to allow additional time for consultation with all stakeholders.

The planned embassy, China’s largest anywhere in the world, has living accommodation for 200 staff, offices and significant underground space.

The site, which contains “listed” [protected] buildings and a residential block, was purchased by the Chinese government for $339 million in 2018.

Tower Hamlets councillors voted to reject the embassy’s planning application in 2022 and the then-Conservative government declined to intervene, stalling all progress until Starmer’s Labour administration came into office last year and took the matter out the local authority’s hands.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London criticized what they said was yet another hurdle stretching out the process into an eighth year.

“We strongly deplore the U.K.-side’s repeated postponement of the decision on the planning application for the new Chinese embassy project. We strongly urge the U.K. side to approve our planning application quickly to avoid further undermining the mutual trust and cooperation between the two sides,” the spokesperson said.

In October of 2018, U.S.-based journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside Saudi Arabia’s embassy in Istanbul, Turkey. The CIA concluded that the assassination was carried out by Saudi operatives, on order of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The prince denied the accusations, although other U.S. intelligence agencies later made the same formal assessment.

Tuesday, President Trump showered the Saudi leader with praise during his first invitation to the White House since the killing. “We’ve been really good friends for a long period of time,” said Trump. “We’ve always been on the same side of every issue.”

Clearly. Their shared disdain — and fear — of a free press was evident, from downplaying the killing of Khashoggi to snapping at ABC News reporter Mary Bruce when she asked about his murder.

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that,” Trump said, then he proceeded to debase a journalist who wasn’t there to report on the event because he’d been silenced, forever. Referring to Khashoggi, he said, “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

Mohammed bin Salman, left, and Jamal Khashoggi.

(Associated Press / Tribune News Service)

Fender-benders happen. Spilled milk happens. But the orchestrated assassination of a journalist by a regime that he covers is not one of those “things” that just happen. It’s an orchestrated hit meant to silence critics, control the narrative and bury whatever corruption, human rights abuses or malfeasance that a healthy free press is meant to expose.

Bruce did what a competent reporter is supposed to do. She deviated from Tuesday’s up-with-Saudi-Arabia! agenda to ask the hard questions of powerful men not used to being questioned about anything, let alone murder. The meeting was meant to highlight the oil-rich country’s investment in the U.S. economy, and at Trump’s prompting, Prince Mohammed said those investments could total $1 trillion.

Prince Mohammed addressed the death of Khashoggi by saying his country hopes to do better in the future, whatever that means. “It’s painful and it’s a huge mistake, and we are doing our best that this doesn’t happen again.”

And just in case the two men hadn’t made clear how little they cared about the slain journalist, and how much they disdain the news media, Trump drove those points home when he referred to Bruce’s query as “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question.” He suggesting that ABC should lose its broadcasting license.

Trump confirmed Tuesday that he intends to sell “top of the line” F-35 stealth fighter jets to Riyadh. It’s worth noting that the team of 15 Saudi agents allegedly involved in Khashoggi’s murder flew to Istanbul on government aircraft. The reporter was lured to the Saudi embassy to pick up documents that were needed for his planned marriage to a Turkish woman.

The prince knew nothing about it, said Trump on Tuesday, despite the findings of a 2021 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that cited “the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Mohammad bin Salman’s protective detail.” It concluded that it was “highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.”

To no one’s surprise, the Saudi government had tried to dodge the issue before claiming Khashoggi had been killed by rogue officials, insisting that the slaying and dismemberment was not premeditated. They offered no explanation of how a bonesaw just happened to be available inside the embassy.

President Trump shakes hands with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House in 2018.

(MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Five men were sentenced to death, but one of Khashoggi’s sons later announced that the family had forgiven the killers, which, in accordance with Islamic law, spared them from execution.

The president’s castigation of ABC’s Bruce was the second time in a week that he has ripped into a female journalist when she asked a “tough” question (i.e. anything Newsmax won’t ask). Trump was speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One last Friday when Bloomberg News’ Catherine Lucey asked him follow-up question about the Epstein files. The president replied, “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”

Trump’s contempt for the press was clear, but so was something else he shares with the crown prince, Hungary’s Victor Orban and Vladimir Putin: The president doesn’t just hate the press. He fears it.