Doha wins a round in Gulf airspace spat

THE HAGUE: Qatar won a round in a legal dispute to reopen airspace that’s been off-limits since Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic ties with the Gulf nation.

The International Court of Justice on Tuesday rejected an appeal from the Saudi-led bloc. It said the International Civil Aviation Organisation has jurisdiction to oversee negotiations on a ban on Qatar-registered aircraft in airspace controlled by the boycotting countries.

The quartet cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in June 2017, accusing the country of supporting terrorism and cozying up to Iran — which Qatar denies.

Qatar has implored ICAO, a United Nations agency based in Montreal, to force the countries to reopen their airspace using its dispute resolution mechanism. The agency agreed to hear the case on Qatar’s request in 2018. The opposing group then took objections about the agency’s jurisdiction to ICJ.

Qatar welcomed the ICJ’s decision, according to Jassim Saif Ahmed alSulaiti, Qatar’s Minister of Transport and Communications, in a statement. “We are confident that the ICAO will ultimately find these actions unlawful.”

The UAE said the court’s ruling was limited to procedural issues and “didn’t consider the merits of the case”, the Gulf nation’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Hissa Abdullah al-Otaiba, said in statement, adding that her country looks forward to addressing the dispute before the ICAO Council.

The land and air restrictions imposed by the boycotting group have led Qatar to rely more heavily on Iranian airspace to transport people and goods. Airspace was a focus of a recent push by the US to resolve the Gulf rift because it complicates US foreign policy toward Iran.