Qatar slams Saudi refusal to negotiate

Qatar on Wednesday condemned Saudi Arabia’s refusal to negotiate the demands of the kingdom and its allies for ending a crippling embargo on the emirate.

Speaking in Washington, where he held talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said the Saudi position was unacceptable.

“This is contrary to the principles that govern international relations because you can’t just present lists of demands and refuse to negotiate,” Sheikh Mohammed said in comments published in Doha.

His Saudi counterpart, Adel al-Jubeir, who is also in Washington, was steadfast on Tuesday about the three-week-old dispute, which has left Qatar, a US ally, isolated under a trade and diplomatic embargo set by its Gulf Arab neighbors.

“Our demands on Qatar are non-negotiable. It’s now up to Qatar to end its support for extremism and terrorism,” Jubeir said on Twitter.

With the support of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain, the Saudis announced on June 5 they were suspending all ties with Qatar, accusing it of support for extremist groups — a claim Doha denies.

They closed their airspace to Qatari carriers and blocked the emirate’s only land border, a vital route for its food imports. They also ordered all Qataris to leave and their own nationals to return home.

Last week Riyadh laid down a list of 13 demands for Qatar, including ending Doha’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, the closure of Al-Jazeera television, a downgrade of diplomatic ties with Iran and the shutdown of a Turkish military base in the emirate.

The United Arab Emirates warned that Qatar should take the demands seriously or face “divorce” from its Gulf neighbors.

In an interview with the UK daily The Guardian, UAE Ambassador to Moscow Omar Ghobash said that the coalition countries were weighing further measures if their demands went unmet, including booting Qatar from the Gulf Cooperation Council and applying secondary sanctions against entities that do business with Qatar.

“Their position today anyway is inconsistent with being members of the GCC because it is a common security and defense organization,” Ghobash told the newspaper in London. “There are certain economic sanctions that we can take which are being considered right now.

“One possibility would be to impose conditions on our own trading partners and say you want to work with us then you have got to make a commercial choice,” Ghobash said. “If Qatar was not willing to accept the demands, it is a case of ‘Goodbye Qatar,’ we do not need you in our tent any more.”

The ambassador noted that the coalition states were prepared to submit to the same strict monitoring to prevent terror funding and support as they were demanding of Qatar.

“Yes, we are making demands of Qatar, but it is very important to realize that we are imposing the same standards on ourselves,” he said. “So if we are to ask for the monitoring of Qatari financial transactions and its funding of terrorism then we would be open to the same idea. This is not bullying. This is demanding a higher standard throughout the whole region.

“We have nothing to hide ourselves so we are willing to meet the same standards we are asking Qatar. The West has traditionally complained of a lack of financial transparency in the region, and there must be a huge amount that the West can do to monitor what is happening.”

The US and some European countries are trying to end the crisis amid concerns it could push Qatar to further align with Iran.

“We are asking Qatar to make a choice and we realize they may choose to take the route to Iran, and we are willing to accept the consequences of that,” Ghobash said, but stressed that “we are not going to escalate militarily. That is not the way we are looking at things.”

The rift between its allies has been a blow to Washington just as its campaign against the Islamic State group comes to a climax in Iraq and Syria.

Tillerson has held repeated meetings with both sides as well as with mediators Kuwait and the United Nations.