KUWAIT CITY (Dispatches) – Kuwait's foreign minister has met Qatar's ruler for talks that apparently aimed at trying to ease renewed tensions between Qatar and fellow Persian Gulf Arabs over its regional policy.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates signaled frustration at Qatar after its state media published purported remarks by Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani criticizing Persian Gulf rhetoric against Iran and suggesting tensions between the emir and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Qatar said the remarks, published late on Tuesday, were fake and that the news agency that ran them had been hacked in an apparent attempt to misrepresent Sheikh Tamim's views.
But Persian Gulf Arab countries including Saudi Arabia allowed their state-backed media to run them throughout the day on Wednesday, infuriating Doha and triggering a war of words in regional media.
Kuwait, which acted as a mediator during a previous Persian Gulf dispute with Qatar, sent its top diplomat Sheikh Sabah al-Khalid al-Sabah to visit Sheikh Tamim on Friday. He conveyed greetings from the Kuwaiti emir to the ruler and Qatari people, state news agency KUNA said, without elaborating.
Qatar says it is being targeted in a "hostile media campaign” after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates blocked its websites and broadcasters over certain remarks attributed to the Qatari emir.
"There is a hostile media campaign against the State of Qatar, which we will confront,” Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Thursday.