Qatar credit rating downgraded due to suspected terror ties

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The international agency Standard and Poor’s has downgraded Qatar’s credit rating because of the Gulf country’s fight with Saudi Arabia and other regional nations, as a top Emirati official signaled there will be no softening of the position against Qatar.

S&P said in a statement yesterday the severing of diplomatic and business links with Qatar “will exacerbate Qatar’s external vulnerabilities and could put pressure on economic growth and fiscal” stability. The agency said it has lowered the rating on Qatar’s long-term debt to AA-minus from AA and has put the country on credit watch with “negative implications.”

A top Emirati diplomat said yesterday “there’s nothing to negotiate” with Qatar over a growing diplomatic dispute about the energy-rich nation’s alleged funding of terror groups, signaling Arab countries now isolating it have no plans to back down.

Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said Qatar has “chosen to ride the tiger of extremism and terrorism” and now needed to pay the price, despite Qatar long denying the allegation. Gargash said Qatar “definitely” should expel members of Hamas, stop its support of terror groups “with al-Qaeda DNA” around the world and rein in the many media outlets it funds, including Al-Jazeera.

While applauding a Kuwaiti effort to mediate the crisis, Gargash said Emirati and Saudi officials planned to concede nothing to Qatar, home to some 10,000 American troops at a major U.S. military base and the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Their “fingerprints are all over the place” in terror funding, Gargash said. “Enough is enough.”

Qatari officials declined to immediately comment on Gargash’s comments. Its foreign minister has struck a defiant tone in interviews, even after worried residents emptied grocery stores in its capital of Doha as Saudi Arabia has blocked food trucks from entering Qatar. Qatar Airways now flies mainly over Iran and Turkey after being blocked elsewhere in the Middle East. UAE officials also shut down the airline’s offices there. Al-Jazeera offices have been shut down by authorities in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

— herald wire services ap photos ‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’: UAE official Anwar Gargash, right, is speaking out against Qatar’s alleged terror ties as economic unrest is barring some of its workforce, below, from re-entering the country.