ABU DHABI // The Saudi foreign minister insisted on Tuesday that Qatar is not under a “blockade” as international mediation efforts failed to make any breakthroughs.
Adel Al Jubeir said the decision by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to cut diplomatic, trade and travel ties with Qatar over its support of extremist groups was “reasonable”.
“There is no blockade of Qatar. Qatar is free to go. The ports are open, the airports are open,” Mr Al Jubeir said in Washington alongside US secretary of state Rex Tillerson. “We have denied them use of our airspace, and this is our sovereign right.”
Mr Al Jubeir insisted this only applied to Qatari airways and that Qatar’s ports remained open. “Qatar can move goods in and out whenever they want. They just cannot use our territorial waters.”
The foreign minister’s comments came as international powers stepped up their response to the crisis.
King Salman and Vladimir Putin spoke on Tuesday and Qatar’s closest ally, Turkey, again waded into the GCC crisis.
Russia, which has ties with all three of the Gulf’s most powerful countries, has worked at facilitating a mediation process.
Meanwhile, Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended Doha and called on the Saudi king to resolve the issue.
“Isolating a nation in all areas is inhumane and against Islamic values”, the Turkish president told a gathering of his party in Ankara. “It’s as if a death penalty decision has been taken on Qatar.”
Mr Erdogan also said he would speak on Tuesday in a joint call with French president Emmanuel Macron and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim to discuss the crisis.
In recent years France’s economic and military links with Doha have strengthened considerably, but for Turkey the embattled Gulf country is its closest Arab ally and has been a partner since the Arab Spring in backing Islamist parties and militias that both viewed as the rising force in the region.
That bet did not pay off, and Mr Erdogan has repaired frayed ties with other GCC states, particularly Saudi Arabia, through mutual economic interests and greater alignment on the threat posed by Iran. But the most severe GCC crisis since the bloc’s creation has badly tested Ankara’s position.
Mr Erdogan approved plans to accelerate the deployment of more troops to Turkey’s new permanent base in Qatar, and has also stepped up exports of basic goods, as the country’s main border with Saudi Arabia and shipping links to the UAE have been suspended.
Qatar has been working to capitalise on its strategic relationships with partners around the world who depend on Qatar’s natural gas exports to increase pressure for a resolution.
The UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, criticised this bid. “After great efforts to internationalise the crisis between him and his brothers, and after much applause from his media, and clamouring he’s been wronged, our brother will realise that the solution is in Riyadh, with [King] Salman,” he said in a Twitter post on Monday.
Pakistan’s prime minister, military chief and finance minister met with King Salman and other Saudi officials in Jeddah on Monday. The Pakistani foreign office on Monday dismissed reports that ran in Turkish media that it would be deploying any troops to Qatar.
Jordan’s King Abdullah met with the emir of Kuwait, who has been leading shuttle diplomacy efforts within the GCC. Kuwait and Oman have not cut ties with Doha.
The foreign power most likely to play a key role in any mediation efforts is Washington, which is still the most important relationship for each Gulf country.
Mr Trump last week offered to mediate at the White House, although he has also repeatedly backed the Saudi and UAE measures aimed at bringing Doha into line with their policies on Islamist groups and Iran.
But the US secretaries of defence and state are the principals engaging their Gulf counterparts. On Tuesday the Qatari defence minister was also in Washington for talks.
US officials have said that the country has made progress towards choking off private funding for extremist groups. But they have also said much more needs to be done, and have described Qatar as continuing to be a “permissive” environment for fund raising, with no progress on prosecuting terrorist financiers.
The UAE’s influential ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba, wrote in an article published on Monday that Qatar’s close relations and investments in the US and other western countries while funding extremist groups “is a striking and dangerous contradiction”.
"Qatar invests billions of dollars in the US and Europe and then recycles the profits to support Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and groups linked to Al Qaeda. Qatar hosts the American military base from which the US directs the regional war against extremism, yet it also owns media networks responsible for inciting many of the same extremists," Mr Al Otaiba wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
For a resolution to be reached, Doha must shut down funding for “extremism”, stop interfering in theinternal affairs of GCC states, “and end its media incitement and radicalisation”.
He also said the US airbase in Qatar is “critical” and that “while the current measures against Qatar remain in place, the UAE and America’s other friends in the region will continue working closely with the US military to sustain the base’s full war-fighting capabilities”.
The UAE aviation authority on Tuesday clarified its position on the air embargo the country has placed on Qatar along with Saudi and Bahrain, saying that the ban only applies to Qatari airlines or aircraft registered in the emirate.
Qatar Airways on Monday requested that the United Nations aviation body declare the blocking of Qatari flights through surrounding airspace a violation of a UN convention on international air travel.
tkhan@thenational.ae
*With additional reporting from Agence France-Presse