Johnson said, “I want to thank King Salman for the Kingdom’s leadership of the G20 in turbulent times”.

“It’s only by joining forces and working together that we will defeat coronavirus and build back better from this crisis”, UK PM 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 delivered to Al-Arabiya, he said Saudi Arabia’s mega-city, NEOM project, “represents a greener future for all of us”.

Johnson also called on other G20 leaders to work together on the climate change ahead of next month’s Clime Ambition summit and highlighted 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.

He further said, “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”.

Saudi Arabia has hosted the G20 summit which is held virtually because of the pandemic.

Leaders and representatives of the 20 biggest world economies (G20) have started debating this weekend about how to deal with the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic that has caused a global recession and how to manage the recovery once the pandemic situation ends.

“Although we are optimistic about the progress made in developing vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics tools for COVID-19, we must work to create the conditions for affordable and equitable access to these tools for all peoples,” he said, opening the meeting of the leaders of the 20 biggest world economies.