MOSCOW - US President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi case on Saturday evening, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said.

On Saturday evening, leaders and heads of governments from around the world, as well as heads of international organizations, gathered for a dinner in the Orsay Museum in Paris ahead of the end of World War I centenary commemorations that are held in the French capital on Sunday.

“I can confirm they sat next to one another and they discussed the ongoing tragic situation with Khashoggi,” Sanders told the Daily Mail newspaper.

According to the newspaper, just a few hours before leaving for Paris, Erdogan acknowledged the existence of a rumored audio tape allegedly documenting Khashoggi’s tortures and death in the Saudi consulate in the Turkish capital of Istanbul.

He also said that Turkey had shared the tape with a number of countries, including the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.

The media outlet reported that the White House had not commented on the audio tape yet.

Khashoggi disappeared on October 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Saudi Arabia’s acknowledgment that the journalist had been killed in a fight inside the consulate came after two weeks of denials and growing pressure from Western allies to provide explanations. Turkey, which has conducted a separate probe into the case, claims that Khashoggi was assassinated by a hit squad sent from Saudi Arabia.

On October 26, the Saudi prosecutor general acknowledged that the journalist’s murder had been premeditated, while Istanbul prosecutors said on October 31 that Khashoggi’s body had been dismembered and destroyed after the murder.

Riyadh maintains that the murder had nothing to do with the Saudi Royal family, describing it as a rogue operation.