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News ID: 60561
Publish Date : 09 December 2018 - 21:21

Qatari Emir Skips GCC Summit in Riyadh

DOHA (Dispatches) – Qatari Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani has decided to skip the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) held in Riyadh on Sunday, sending the country’s state minister for foreign affairs to head the delegation, amid ongoing diplomatic crisis with Qatar’s Persian Gulf neighbors, Qatari Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ahmed AlRumaihi said on Sunday.
"Qatari State Minister for Foreign Affairs Soltan Al-Muraikhi arrived in Riyadh at the head of Qatar’s delegation to attend the summit of the cooperation council ,” AlRumaihi said via his official Twitter feed.
The state minister has no portfolio, meaning that he is not responsible for any particular area of the Qatari government’s activities, performing mainly representational functions on the part of the Qatari government.
Bahrain’s foreign minister criticized Qatar’s emir on Sunday for not attending the summit in Saudi Arabia, an absence that suggests a rift between Doha and three Persian Gulf Arab states is unlikely to be resolved soon.
"Qatar’s emir should have accepted the fair demands (of the boycotting states) and attended the summit,” foreign minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said in a tweet.
In response, Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Rumaihi, director of the information office at Qatar’s foreign ministry, said: "Qatar can make its own decisions and had attended (last year’s) Kuwait summit while the leaders of the boycotting countries did not.”
The official Qatar News Agency said in a tweet on December 3 that the monarch had got "an invitation from the King of Saudi Arabia” for the meeting, but it did not say whether Sheikh Tamim would travel to Saudi Arabia.
The Arabic language Al Aan online newspaper, citing diplomatic sources, reported late last month that Secretary General of the [P]GCC Abdul Latif bin Rashid al-Zayani was going to visit Doha to invite the Qatari emir to attend the 39th annual summit of the regional grouping.
Last month, Kuwait’s Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled al-Jarallah confirmed that all six GCC countries would be attending the annual summit of the council, which is set to take place on December 9.
Jarallah said the summit could present a "hope to resolve the [Persian] Gulf crisis and solve the differences.”
The report came as a surprise since Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, has been embroiled in a diplomatic and trade boycott against Qatar for a year and a half.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt all cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5 last year, after officially accusing it of "sponsoring terrorism.”
The administration of the Saudi-backed and former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, Libya, the Maldives, Djibouti, Senegal and the Comoros later joined the camp in ending diplomatic ties with Doha. Jordan downgraded its diplomatic relations as well.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry later announced that the decision to cut diplomatic ties was unjustified and based on false claims and assumptions.
On June 9, 2017, Qatar strongly dismissed allegations of supporting terrorism after the Saudi regime and its allies blacklisted dozens of individuals and entities purportedly associated with Doha.
Later that month, Saudi Arabia and its allies released a 13-point list of demands, including the closure of Al Jazeera television network and downgrade of relations with Iran, in return for the normalization of diplomatic relations with Doha.
The document containing the demands by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain also asked Qatar to sever all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement.
Qatar rejected the demands as "unreasonable.”

Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani