Kuwait ‘trying to mediate rift’
DUBAI: Kuwait is trying to mediate a Gulf crisis in which Arab countries have cut diplomatic ties to Qatar and moved to isolate the energy-rich travel hub from the outside world, Qatar’s foreign minister said yesterday.
The biggest diplomatic crisis in the Persian Gulf since the 1991 US-led war against Iraq pits several nations against Qatar.
Airlines suspended flights and residents nervous about the peninsula’s lone land border closing cleaned out grocery store shelves.
In an interview with Doha-based satellite news network Al Jazeera, Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman alThani said Kuwait’s ruler had asked Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad alThani, to hold off on giving a speech about the crisis late on Monday night.
“He received a call from the emir of Kuwait asking him to postpone it in order to give time to solve the crisis,” Sheikh Mohammed said.
Still, the minister struck a defiant tone, rejecting those “trying to impose their will on Qatar or intervene in its internal affairs”.
The state-run Kuwait News Agency reported Kuwaiti ruler Sheikh Sabah alAhmad al-Sabah spoke with Qatar’s emir on Monday evening and urged him to give a chance to efforts that could ease tensions. The call came after a senior Saudi royal arrived in Kuwait with a message from the Saudi king. An Omani diplomat travelled to Qatar on Monday.
Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates announced on Monday they would cut diplomatic ties. Yemen’s internationally backed government, which has lost the capital and large portions of the war-torn country, also cut relations with Qatar, as did the Maldives and one of conflict-ridden Libya’s competing governments.
Saudi Arabia said it was cutting ties due to Qatar’s “embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilising the region”, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State group and militants supported by Iran in the kingdom’s restive Eastern Province.
Egypt’s foreign ministry accused Qatar of taking an “antagonist approach” towards Cairo and said “all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed”.
Qatar long has denied funding extremists, though Western officials have accused it of allowing or even encouraging funding of Sunni extremists like alQaeda’s branch in Syria, once known as the Nusra Front.
The Gulf countries ordered their citizens out of Qatar and gave Qataris abroad 14 days to return home to their peninsular nation, whose only land border is with Saudi Arabia. The countries also said they would eject Qatar’s diplomats.
The nations also said they planned to cut air and sea traffic. Doha-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera reported trucks carrying food had begun lining up on the Saudi side of the border, apparently stranded.
The Qatar Stock Exchange fell more than 7% in trading Monday.
Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers, has suspended all flights to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain until further notice.
On its website, the carrier said the suspension of its flights would take effect yesterday and customers are being offered a refund.