Qatar on its own

Kuwait bid to ease tension

KUWAIT is trying to mediate a diplomatic crisis in which Arab countries have cut diplomatic ties to Qatar and moved to isolate the energy-rich, travel-hub nation from the outside world, Qatar’s foreign minister said yesterday.

The biggest diplomatic crisis in the Persian Gulf region since the 1991 US-led war against Iraq pits several nations against Qatar, home to some 10,000 American troops and a major US military base.

Airlines suspended flights and residents nervous about the peninsula’s lone land border closing cleaned out grocery store shelves.

In an interview with Dohabased satellite news network Al-Jazeera, Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Kuwait’s ruler had asked Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, to hold off on giving a speech about the crisis last night in order to allow more time for a solution.

Still, the minister struck a defiant tone, vowing his nation rejected those “trying to impose their will on Qatar or in- tervene in its internal affairs.” Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced on Monday they would cut diplomatic ties. Yemen’s internationallybacked government, which has lost the capital and large portions of the war-torn country, also cut relations with Qatar, as did the Maldives and one of conflict-ridden Libya’s competing governments.

The move came just two weeks after US President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia and vowed to improve ties with Riyadh and Cairo to combat terrorism and contain Iran.

Saudi Arabia said it was cutting ties due to Qatar’s “embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilising the region,” including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and militants supported by Iran in the kingdom’s restive Eastern Province.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry accused Qatar of taking an “antagonist approach” toward Cairo and said “all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed”.