UAE slams Qatar stance on GCC

dubai — The UAE has slammed Qatar Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani’s assertion that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had become defunct and needed a replacement.

Responding to a statement made by Qatar’s top diplomat at Doha Forum, the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr Anwar Mohammed Gargash, said Qatar’s turnaround on the GCC is an act of desperation to hide its devious role in the region.

Launching a broadside against the Qatar-Iran-Turkey nexus,

the UAE minister tweeted: “It is obvious the Qatar regime understands that its citizens see their isolation from their GCC neighbours as a major problem and unnatural condition, hence it is desperately trying to fix the apparent part of the problem without fixing the real causes of the dispute.”

“We may not add any news when we emphasise that their hard and desperate begging for solutions from western capitals didn’t succeed, and it wasn’t even considered a convincing policy. Yet Doha keeps working on the same desperate sequence under the protection of Iran and Turkey,” the UAE foreign minister added.

Earlier, the Qatar foreign minister claimed the boycott imposed on the emirate by Saudi Arabia and its allies had irreparably damaged the six-nation structure.

“The regional alliance has been undermined by the crisis,” the Qatar foreign minister said at the Doha Forum. “Therefore, the alliance that existed needs to be reshaped and redesigned to ensure future stability and security of the region.”

The minister alleged the GCC had ‘no teeth’ to resolve any dispute.

The minister was speaking after Qatar’s Amir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, stayed away from the GCC’s annual summit in Riyadh last Sunday despite receiving an invitation from its Saudi hosts.