Qatar rejects ‘intervention’ in foreign policy
DOHA: Qatar’s foreign minister Thursday rejected interference in his country’s foreign policy, ruling out a military solution to a crisis which has seen Riyadh and its allies cut ties with Doha.
“No one has the right to intervene in our foreign policy,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told AFP.
“We don’t see a military solution as an option” to the crisis, he added.
“We have been isolated because we are successful and progressive. We are a platform for peace not terrorism ... This dispute is threat- ening the stability of the entire region,” Sheikh Mohammed said.
“We are not ready to surrender, and will never be ready to surrender, the independence of our foreign policy,” he said.
While the foreign minister said Qatar had not yet been presented with a list of demands by countries that cut off ties with Doha on Monday, he insisted it be solved by peaceful means.
He said that Iran had told Doha it was ready to help with securing food supplies and that it would designate three of its ports to Qatar but that the offer had not yet been accepted. A top UAE official on Wednesday told AFP that the unprecedented measures against Qatar aim to pressure Doha into making drastic policy changes.
“This is not about regime change — this is about change of policy, change of approach,” Anwar Gargash, state minister for foreign affairs, said, accusing the government in Doha of being in “denial.”
Gargash on Wednesday told AFP the measures against Doha were limited to diplomatic and economic ties, but warned that no one could project the “dynamic of a crisis.”
“Like any crisis, you cannot really control the dynamic... this is one of the dangers of any crisis. There is no intention for us to seek anything but what we look at as economic spheres of activities,” he said.
Sheikh Mohammed said Qatar could nonetheless survive “forever,” adding that it respected international agreements and would continue supplying liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the UAE.
Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of LNG.