Qatar says Kuwait trying to mediate, solve Gulf crisis
Kuwait is trying to mediate a Gulf crisis between Qatar and its Arab neighbours, which have severed ties with the energyrich travel hub and moved to isolate it from the outside world, Qatar’s foreign minister said Tuesday.
The biggest diplomatic crisis in the Persian Gulf since the 1991 U.S.-led war against Iraq pits several nations against Qatar, which is home to some 10,000 American troops and a major U.S. 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 emir to hold off on giving a speech about the crisis Monday night.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani “received a call from the emir of Kuwait asking him to postpone it in order to give time to solve the crisis,” Sheikh Mohammed said.
Still, the minister struck a defiant tone, rejecting those “trying to impose their will on Qatar or intervene in its internal affairs.”
The state-run Kuwait News Agency reported Kuwaiti ruler Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al Sabah spoke with Qatar’s emir Monday evening and urged him to give a chance to efforts that
could ease tensions. The call came after a senior Saudi royal arrived in Kuwait with a message from the Saudi king. An Omani diplomat travelled to Qatar on Monday.
Sheikh Sabah left Tuesday night for Saudi Arabia.
U.S. President Donald Trump – who travelled to Saudi Arabia for a recent conference of Arab nations and told Qatar’s ruler at the time that “we’ve been friends now for a long time” – weighed in on the conflict for the first time. Trump did not take a position, but appeared to suggest it was understandable to isolate Qatar.
“During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of
Radical Ideology,” he tweeted. “Leaders pointed to Qatar – look!”
He later tweeted: “Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”
Meanwhile, the Philippines announced it will temporarily suspend the deployment of Filipino workers to Qatar. Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello said the ban took effect Tuesday, but there is no plan yet to repatriate the more than 200,000 Filipino workers in Qatar.
More than one million Filipinos reside and work in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain.
Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced Monday they would cut diplomatic ties.