Saudi Arabia and allies voice their regret over Qatar’s ‘negative’ response
The illegal siege of Qatar, that crossed the one-month mark yesterday, shows no sign of dissipating.
After extending the 10-day deadline provided to Qatar to comply to their demands, Saudi Arabia and their allies had announced that they had received Qatar’s response to their list of 13 demands.
The four Arab nations that imposed a blockade on Qatar — Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE — issued a statement saying that Doha’s response to their demands to end the crisis was ‘not serious,’ reported Al Jazeera.
The statement came after foreign ministers from the four countries met in Cairo after receiving Doha’s response.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told reporters that Qatar’s response was ‘generally negative’ and failed to ‘lay the foundation for Qatar’s reversal of the policies it pursues.’
He also said Doha’s response as a ‘position that reflects a failure to realise the gravity of the situation.’
“We hope wisdom will prevail and Qatar will eventually make the right decisions,” Shoukry added.
However, the countries refrained from imposing fresh sanctions on Qatar, but said their boycott of the country would continue, reported Gulf Times.
The failure of the blockading nations to break Qatar’s steely resolve was evident from the joint statement issued at the end of their meeting.
“The political and economic boycott will continue until Qatar changes its policies for the better,” Saudi Arabian foreign minister Adel Al Jubeir said.
The four foreign ministers said they would next meet in the Bahraini capital Manama though they gave no date.
But Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan was more belligerent in his criticism of Qatar, saying it is only interested in “destruction, incitement, extremism and terrorism.”
While the contents of Qatar’s response have not been made public, the country’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani had called the list of demands as ‘unrealistic and not actionable.’ He had said the list was meant to be rejected.
Qatar needs to create a powerfull Intelligence department... fight it out internally by splitting the enemy royals into to two rival groups.... The good ole British technique.
all i can say is im proud to be a Qatar Resident.
It takes two hands to clap .... Both sides need to show some flexibility to resolve the unfortunate crisis.
We should not be hard, sometimes we have to sacrifice a little & agree upon the point for the overall & general. All we wish is a resolve and much better relations once again.