UAE’s Controversial Foreign Affairs Minister Removed

Date: 10 February 2021 - 21:46

News ID: ۸۷۴۶۲

DUBAI (Dispatches) – Anwar Gargash, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) minister of state for foreign affairs who made many controversial remarks about neighboring countries and worked on the normalization deal with the Zionist regime last year, has been removed from his post, the government said on Wednesday.
Shiekh Mohammed bin Rashid, Dubai’s emir and UAE prime minister, said on Twitter the move is part of a cabinet reshuffle he had ordered.
Gargash, who has occupied the second most senior foreign affairs position since 2008 will become a diplomatic advisor to UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Reuters reported.
Zaki Nusseibeh also stepped down from his position of minister for public and cultural diplomacy to become a cultural advisor to the president.
Sheikh Shakhbout bin Nahyan, the former UAE ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will take up the post of minister of state at the foreign ministry, alongside Khalifa Al Marar, who was previously assistant minister of political affairs.
In a post on his Twitter account in October last year, the now-deposed Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs minister criticized Turkey’s military presence in Qatar, claiming the Turkish base in the Arab country destabilizes the Persian Gulf region.
Gargash described as "an emergency” the Turkish military presence in the Persian Gulf.
"It reinforces polarization, and it does not take into account the sovereignty of states and the interests of the [Persian] Gulf countries and its people,” Gargash added.
Turkey has been a major supporter of Qatar since June 2017, when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE severed diplomatic and trade relations with Doha.
As tensions simmered in the Persian Gulf, Gargash said in other incendiary remarks that the UAE says its allies do not trust Qatar, calling for a Western body to monitor Doha.
"We do not trust them (Qatar). There is zero trust, but we need a monitoring system and we need our Western friends to play a role in this,” UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said.
As an ally of the Saudi regime, he was also one of the supporters of the UAE policy to keep bombing impoverished Yemen.