Emirates abandon Al Jazeera demand
MIDDLE EAST: The Gulf countries blockading Qatar are to drop their demand that the Al Jazeera television network be shut down as they seek a compromise over the dispute that has ruptured relations across the region.
The United Arab Emirates backed away from threats to step up sanctions on the tiny Gulf nation, which was cut off diplomatically and economically by its neighbours last month.
A minister told The Times it was seeking a ‘‘fundamental change and restructuring’’ of Al Jazeera rather than to close it. A Saudi source said Riyadh was ‘‘expected’’ to agree to the concession. Leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt were meeting in Jeddah yesterday to discuss a way out of the crisis, in which Qatar has so far resisted all 13 of the group’s demands.
They were joined by Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, who crushed their hopes of tightening sanctions on Wednesday by saying that Qatar’s response had been ‘‘reasonable’’. He also signed a counterterrorism agreement with Doha. One of the main accusations levelled against Qatar is that it allows the funding of violent Islamism.
The four nations, all close allies of the US , had been hoping that backing from President Donald Trump, who initially tweeted his support for their blockade, would bring Qatar to heel. One wellconnected analyst of the region said they were ‘‘reeling’’ at their failure to get their way.
The order to close Al Jazeera and its associated channels, including the well-respected English language network, was seen as a key demand as well as the most controversial. Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, denounced it as an ‘‘unacceptable attack’’ on free speech.
Anwar Gargash, the UAE foreign affairs minister, wrote to the high commissioner yesterday to insist that the UAE’s objections to Al Jazeera were ‘‘a direct and necessary response to its persistent and dangerous incitement to hostility, violence and discrimination’’. He specified that he was referring to Al Jazeera Arabic.
In an interview with The Times, Noura al-Kaabi, the UAE minister for the federal national council, struggled to explain why the quartet had also demanded the closure of Al Jazeera English, whose professionalism she praised in contrast to the Arabic channel. She said later that the UAE had backed off its demands for either channel to be closed if there was a ‘‘fundamental change and restructuring’’. ‘‘The staff at the channel can keep their jobs and Qatar can still fund a TV channel but not one which provides a platform for extremists and where the English channel is a protective shield for the much more radical Arabic one.’’
Kaabi also backed away from the UAE’s previous threats to intensify the blockade with the introduction of new sanctions. She said that the Saudi-led quartet was ready to negotiate. ‘‘We need a diplomatic solution. We are not looking for an escalation.’’ The four had previously called the list of demands ‘‘non-negotiable’’.
Qatar has also indicated it is willing to compromise. Although it rejected the list of demands, officials insist that the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, is focused on ‘‘domestic affairs’’ and running the country without reference to his father, Sheikh Hamad, who abdicated four years ago. At the heart of the dispute is the aggressive foreign policy overseen by Sheikh Hamad in his two decades in power.
Omar Ghobash, a senior UAE envoy, said last month that the quartet was considering forcing trade partners to choose between doing business with them or Qatar if it did not accede to the demands. - The Times