Cairo, Mar 7 (AP) Qatar will not be barred from an Arab summit in Riyadh later this month, but the standoff between Doha and a Saudi-led, four-nation alliance could last a “long time,” Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said in comments published today.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut ties with Qatar in June, accusing the tiny but super-rich Gulf state of supporting militant groups and cozying up to Shiite, non-Arab Iran.
Qatar has long denied funding extremists, though it supports Islamist opposition movements that are considered terrorist groups by other countries in the region. It has long had warm ties with Iran, with which it shares a massive undersea gas field.
“We will not accept any resolutions to the crisis (with Qatar) outside an Arab or a Gulf framework, but that does not mean we will bar Qatar from attending the upcoming Arab summit,” said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who flew to London last night at the end of a three-day visit to Egypt.
His comments, made to Egyptian editors, were published today in the Al-Shorouk newspaper.
He said the crisis with Qatar “could last for a long time,” comparing it to the United States’ decades-long embargo on Cuba.
Saudi Arabia sealed Qatar’s only land border last June, and the four nations have cut off air and sea access, forcing Qatar to divert flights over Iran and transit goods through other ports.
The prince described Iran, Turkey and militant groups as the “contemporary triangle of evil.” He said the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group declared a terrorist organisation by Egypt and outlawed in most Gulf Arab states, had taken advantage of democratic elections.
He said Turkey, which supports the Brotherhood, was trying to resurrect the Ottoman Empire.
The Brotherhood won a series of free elections in Egypt after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, culminating in Egypt’s presidential election the following year. But President Mohammed Morsi, a senior Brotherhood figure, was overthrown a year later by the military amid mass protests calling for his resignation.
The prince claimed success in the kingdom’s struggle to counter Tehran’s growing influence in the region, saying “Iran’s project is collapsing and we are besieging it everywhere.”
A Saudi-led coalition has been battling Iran-allied rebels in Yemen since March 2015, but has made little headway. The war has killed more than 10,000 people and driven the Arab world’s poorest country to the brink of famine, while the Houthi rebels remain in firm control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north.
In Syria, meanwhile, Saudi-backed rebels have suffered a series of setbacks over the past two years as Russian and Iranian support has allowed President Bashar Assad’s forces to advance on several fronts.
Saudi Arabia has sought to rally support against Iran by allying itself with Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, Sunni nations that fear Tehran’s growing influence.
A joint Saudi-Egyptian statement released late yesterday, which apparently referred to Iran, said “the security of the Arab region cannot be realised except through the end of all attempts to interfere by a regional party in the affairs of Arab nations.”
