Mecca Newspaper: Bahrain foreign minister says all options open on Qatar

Author

09 June, 2017

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain announced on Monday they were cutting diplomatic ties and closing air, sea and land links with Qatar, giving Qataris within their borders two weeks to leave.

Their "fingerprints are all over the place" in terror funding, Gargash said.

Meanwhile Kuwait's ruler Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah continued a regional effort to mediate the crisis, shuttling from the UAE en route to Qatar on Wednesday evening, a Kuwaiti diplomat told Reuters.

"First, and most importantly, the leaders agreed on the importance of implementing agreements reached in Riyadh to counter extremism and to combat the funding of terrorist groups", a White House said on the talks between Trump and Nahyan.

Jordan also said it will close Al Jazeera's local office.

U.S. President Donald Trump took sides in the rift on Tuesday, praising the actions against Qatar, but later spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman and stressed the need for Gulf unity.

"This is not about regime change - this is about a change of policy, change of approach", Gargash said.

In a statement released by Saudi-run news agency SPA, the Gulf nations also claimed Qatar helped spread radical messages through its media, an apparent reference to Al Jazeera, the Doha-based state-funded broadcaster that prides itself on being an independent news network. His remarks came at a time when several countries, including Turkey and Iran, increased their efforts to introduce a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Given the Trump administration's embrace of Riyadh as a counterterrorism partner, we are likely to hear calls in Washington to align with Saudi Arabia and against Qatar in the current Gulf Arab dispute.

Qatar faced a similar crisis in 2014 that saw multiple Arab nations pull their ambassadors from the country. In fact, the row has forced Qatar Airways to literally fall in line after Qatar's neighbouring countries closed their airspaces for the emirate's national carrier. Turkish exporters have also pledged to provide food and water to Qatar if needed.

"Inclination or favoritism" towards Qatar by social media users in the UAE is punishable by three to 15 years in prison, alongside a minimum fine of 500,000 dirhams ($136,000), according to the Public Prosecutor's statement. "They are the cohorts of Zionists and finances of oppression and obscenity", the group said. One of the reasons listed was that Facebook (QNA's Instagram account had carried the Qatai Emir's controversial comments) "is very hard to hack". Moscow said the report was false.

Federal Bureau of Investigation experts visited Qatar in late May to analyse an alleged cyber breach that saw the hackers place the fake story with Qatar's state news agency, the U.S. broadcaster said. From the perspective of US strategic interests, the desired outcome is eventual reconciliation among these regional partners, and the Saudi-led collective has sufficient leverage to achieve that without the USA further isolating Qatar and embroiling itself in a thorny regional dispute.


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