Tag Archives: Qatar

UAE turns screw on Qatar, threatens sympathizers with jail

A shop with a picture of Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani is seen in Doha, Qatar, June 6, 2017. REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon

By Sylvia Westall and Tom Finn

DUBAI/DOHA (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates tightened the squeeze on fellow Gulf state Qatar on Wednesday threatening anyone publishing expressions of sympathy toward it with up to 15 years in prison, and barring entry to Qataris.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash also told Reuters there would be more curbs if necessary and said Qatar needed to make iron-clad commitments to change what critics say is a policy on funding militants.

Qatar vehemently denies any such backing.

Efforts to defuse the regional crisis — triggered on Monday when the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others severed diplomatic ties with Qatar over alleged support for Islamist groups and Iran — showed no immediate signs of success.

U.S. President Donald Trump took sides in the rift on Tuesday, praising the actions against Qatar, but later spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman and stressed the need for Gulf unity.

His defense secretary, James Mattis, also spoke to his Qatari counterpart to express commitment to the Gulf region’s security. Qatar hosts 8,000 U.S. military personnel at al Udeid, the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East and a launchpad for U.S.-led strikes on the Islamic State militant group.

Kuwait’s emir has also been seeking to mediate, meeting Saudi’s king on Tuesday.

Qatar’s sudden isolation has led to the country holding talks with Turkey, Iran and others to secure food and water supplies, according to a Qatari official.

UAE-based newspaper Gulf News and pan-Arab channel Al-Arabiya reported the crackdown on expressions of sympathy with Qatar.

“Strict and firm action will be taken against anyone who shows sympathy or any form of bias towards Qatar, or against anyone who objects to the position of the United Arab Emirates, whether it be through the means of social media, or any type of written, visual or verbal form,” Gulf News quoted UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif al-Shamsi as saying.

On top of a possible jail term, offenders could also be hit with a fine of at least 500,000 dirhams, the newspaper said, citing a statement to Arabic-language media.

Since the diplomatic row erupted, slogans against and in support of Qatar have dominated Twitter in Arabic, a platform used widely in the Arab world, particularly in Saudi Arabia.

Newspapers and television channels in the region have also been engaged in a war of words over Qatar.

Allegations of Islamist sympathies and support have for years strained Doha’s relations with its Gulf Arab neighbors, who consider movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood a security threat.

The UAE’s state-owned Etihad Airways, meanwhile, said all travelers holding Qatari passports were currently prohibited from traveling to or transiting through the emirates on government instructions.

Foreigners residing in Qatar and in possession of a Qatari residence visa would also not be eligible for visa on arrival in the UAE, Etihad spokesman said in an email.

“This ruling applies to all airlines flying into the UAE,” the spokesman said in the statement.

Those breaking ties with Qatar are the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the Maldives, Mauritania and Libya’s eastern-based government. Jordan has downgraded its diplomatic representation and revoked the license of Doha-based TV channel Al Jazeera.

SQUEEZE

Qataris were loading up on supplies in supermarkets, fearing shortages.

One official in Doha, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were enough grain supplies to last four weeks and that the government also had large strategic food reserves. But talks were underway to ensure supplies.

“We are in talks with Turkey and Iran and other countries,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

He said supplies would be brought in through Qatar Airways cargo flights.

Closing all transport links with Qatar, the three Gulf states who have moved against Doha gave Qatari visitors and residents two weeks to leave. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt banned Qatari planes from landing and forbade them from crossing their air space.

“This is a very diverse relationship that Qatar has with the UAE and with Saudi and Bahrain – families, business, travel, interests … It will be quite complex to disentangle, but we are intent on saying we cannot go back to the status quo ante,” Gargash, the UAE minister, told Reuters in an interview.

He said more steps against Qatar, including further curbs on business, remain on the table.

“We hope that cooler heads will prevail, that wiser heads will prevail and we will not get to that,” he said.

MARKETS

Qatar’s stock index was down 1.15 percent after plummeting 8.7 percent over the last two days.

“Tensions are still high and mediation efforts by fellow Gulf Cooperation Council state Kuwait have yet to lead to a concrete solution, so investors will likely remain on edge,” said one Dubai-based trader.

Oil prices dipped on renewed concerns about the efficacy of OPEC-led production cuts due to the tensions, and also over growing U.S. output.

Qatar has said it will not retaliate against the curbs.

“We are willing to sit and talk,” Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told CNN late on Tuesday. He said his country was “protecting the world from potential terrorists”.

A Qatari official, however, said the rift was pushing Doha in the direction of leaving the six-state Gulf Cooperation Council, founded in 1981, “with deep regret”.

Bans on Doha’s fleet using regional ports and anchorages are threatening to halt some of its exports and disrupt those of liquefied natural gas.

Traders on global markets worried that Riyadh’s allies would refuse to accept LNG shipments from the Gulf state, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter, and that Egypt might even bar tankers carrying Qatari cargoes from using the Suez Canal as they head to Europe and beyond.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall, Hadeel Al Sayegh, Celine Aswad, William MacLean; Writing by Jeremy Gaunt; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Turkey’s Erdogan holds talks with leaders on lowering Qatar tension: sources

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses members of parliament from his ruling AK Party (AKP) during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara, Turkey, May 30, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has spoken by phone with the leaders of Qatar, Russia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on lowering tension, presidential sources said, after Arab powers cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting Islamist militants.

“The importance of regional peace and stability was underlined in the talks, as well as the importance of focusing on the path of diplomacy and dialogue to lower the current tension,” the sources said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed their ties with Qatar on Monday, opening up the worst rift in years among some of the most powerful states in the Arab world.

Turkey has good relations with Qatar as well as several of its Gulf Arab neighbors and Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Monday that Ankara wanted to help resolve the dispute.

After the talks between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said late on Monday they called for dialogue and compromise.

Erdogan also spoke with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and the emirs of Qatar and Kuwait. The sources said Erdogan would continue his contacts on the issue.

(Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Kuwait seeks to mediate Arab crisis over Qatar

An Eikon ship-tracking screen shows tanker traffic around Qatar over the last seven days in this June 6, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration

By Tom Finn and Sylvia Westall

DOHA/DUBAI (Reuters) – Kuwait’s ruler will travel to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, hoping to heal a damaging rift between Qatar and powerful Arab states over the former’ s alleged support of Islamist militants and of political and religious rival Iran.

Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah will meet with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and seek to resolve the worst infighting among the Arab world’s strongest and richest powers in decades.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar and closed their airspace to commercial flights on Monday.

In a sign of the potential consequences for the Qatari economy, a number of banks in the region began stepping back from business dealings with Qatar. Saudi Arabia’s central bank advised banks in the kingdom not to trade with Qatari banks in Qatari riyals, sources said.

Oil prices also fell on concern that the rift would undermine efforts by OPEC to tighten production.

Qatar and the other Arab states fell out over Doha’s alleged support for Islamist militants and Shi’ite Iran — charges Qatar has called baseless.

It said, however, that it would not retaliate and hoped Kuwait would help resolve the dispute.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV that Qatar wants to give Kuwait’s ruler the ability to “proceed and communicate with the parties to the crisis and to try to contain the issue”.

Qatar’s leader, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, spoke by telephone overnight with his counterpart in Kuwait and, in order to allow Kuwait to mediate, decided to put off a planned speech to the nation, the foreign minister said.

Qatar has for years parlayed its enormous gas wealth and media influence into a broad influence in the region. But Gulf Arab neighbors and Egypt have long been irked by its maverick stances and support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which they regard as a political enemy.

Yemen, Libya’s eastern-based government and the Maldives – close allies of Qatar’s adversaries in the spat – also cut ties.

The United States, Russia, France, Iran and Turkey have all called for the row to be resolved through dialogue.

BANKS SHUN QATAR, FLIGHTS DIVERTED

Tightening pressure, Saudi Arabia’s aviation authority revoked the license of Qatar Airways and ordered its offices to be closed within 48 hours, a day after the kingdom, the UAE and Bahrain closed their airspace to Qatari commercial flights.

Flight tracker websites showed Qatar Airways flights taking a circuitous route mostly over Iran to avoid their neighbors.

Some Saudi Arabian and UAE commercial banks were also shunning Qatari banks, holding off on letters of credit, banking sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

With an estimated $335 billion of assets in its sovereign wealth fund and its gas exports earning billions of dollars every month, Qatar, however, has enough financial power to protect its banks.

Qatar’s stock market rebounded in early trade on Tuesday after plunging the previous day but the Qatari riyal fell against the U.S. dollar.

Kuwait’s emir, who has spent decades as a diplomat and mediator in regional disputes, hosted Sheikh Tamim last week as the crisis began brewing.

Monday’s decision forbids Saudi, UAE and Bahraini citizens from traveling to Qatar, residing in it or passing through it, instructing their citizens to leave Qatar within 14 days and Qatari nationals were given 14 days to leave those countries.

The measures are more severe than during a previous eight-month rift in 2014, when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE withdrew their ambassadors from Doha, again alleging Qatari support for militant groups.

The United Arab Emirates said Qatar needed to carry out specific confidence-building measures and change its behavior.

“After previous experiences with the brother state, we need a frame for the future that will consolidate the security and the stability of the region,” UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash wrote on Twitter overnight.

“We need to rebuild trust after broken pledges, we need a guaranteed roadmap,” he wrote.

But Qatari state TV broadcast images of Sheikh Tamim embracing the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi — whose stay in Doha has for years irked Gulf states – as part of an annual Ramadan reception with Islamic clerics on Monday.

(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Aziz El Yaakoubi, Tom Arnold, Hadeel Al Sayegh, William Maclean and Celine Aswad in Dubai, Writing by Noah Browning, Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

U.S. might ban laptops on all flights into and out of the country

A TSA worker loads suitcases at the checked luggage security screening station at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California,

By Toni Clarke

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States might ban laptops from aircraft cabins on all flights into and out of the country as part of a ramped-up effort to protect against potential security threats, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on Sunday.

In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Kelly said the United States planned to “raise the bar” on airline security, including tightening screening of carry-on items.

“That’s the thing that they are obsessed with, the terrorists, the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it’s a U.S. carrier, particularly if it’s full of U.S. people.”

In March, the government imposed restrictions on large electronic devices in aircraft cabins on flights from 10 airports, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey.

Kelly said the move would be part of a broader airline security effort to combat what he called “a real sophisticated threat.” He said no decision had been made as to the timing of any ban.

“We are still following the intelligence,” he said, “and are in the process of defining this, but we’re going to raise the bar generally speaking for aviation much higher than it is now.”

Airlines are concerned that a broad ban on laptops may erode customer demand. But none wants an incident aboard one of its airplanes.

“Whatever comes out, we’ll have to comply with,” Oscar Munoz, chief executive officer of United Airlines told  the company’s annual meeting last week.

Airlines were blindsided in January when President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning entry for 90 days to citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, sending airlines scrambling to determine who could board and who could not. The order was later blocked in the courts.

In the case of laptops, the administration is keeping the industry in the loop. Delta Air Lines  said in a statement it “continues to be in close contact with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” while Munoz applauded the administration for giving the company a “heads up.”

“We’ve had constant updates on the subject,” he said. “We know more than most. And again, if there’s a credible threat out there, we need to make sure we take the appropriate measures.”

MORE SCRUTINY OF CARRY-ONS

Among the enhanced security measures will likely be tighter screening of carry-on items to allow Transport Security Administration agents to discern problematic items in tightly stuffed bags.

Kelly said that in order to avoid paying fees for checking bags, people were stuffing them to the point where it was difficult to see through the clutter.

“The more stuff is in there, the less the TSA professionals that are looking at what’s in those bags through the monitors can tell what’s in them.”

The TSA has begun testing certain new procedures at a limited number of airports, requiring people to remove additional items from carry-on bags for separate screenings.

Asked whether the government would expand such measures nationwide, Kelly said: “We might, and likely will.”

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington, David French in New York and Alana Wise in Chicago; Editing by David Gregorio and Peter Cooney)

Qatar says Syria ‘de-escalation’ plan not an alternative to political transition

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani attends a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, in this file photo dated April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

DOHA (Reuters) – Qatar’s foreign minister on Tuesday welcomed a Russian-brokered agreement for “de-escalation” zones in Syria but said the plan was no substitute for a political transition that would see President Bashar al-Assad step down.

Qatar has been a supporter of rebels who have been fighting to overthrow the Syrian president during six years of civil war.

“It is good to have de-escalation zones but this must be a step to reach a solution to the Syrian crisis and not to use it as an excuse to delay this solution and to postpone the political transition,” the Qatari foreign ministry quoted Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani as telling the Doha-based al-Jazeera network.

The remarks came after talks between the Qatari minister and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Washington.

Russia brokered the deal for de-escalation zones with backing from Iran and opposition supporter Turkey during ceasefire talks in the Kazakh capital Astana last week. The deal took effect at midnight on Friday.

Some fighting has continued in those areas, particularly north of Hama city, but the overall intensity has reduced, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

(Reporting by Tom Finn, writing by Sami Aboudi, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Gulf states rebuke Assad over violence in Aleppo

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with a Portuguese television channel

CAIRO (Reuters) – Gulf Arab countries condemned the Syrian government’s handling of a ceasefire and evacuation in Aleppo and called on Thursday for civilians trying to flee the war-torn city to be protected.

An emergency meeting of Arab League representatives convened at Qatar’s request discussed the situation in Aleppo, where an evacuation of the rebel-held eastern part of the city has come under fire from fighters loyal to the Syrian government.

“The Syrian regime and its allies have not only been content with destroying these cities one after the other, they persistently continue to brutally murder our Syrian brothers and sisters without any religious guidance or humanitarian ethics,” Saudi Arabian delegate Ahmed Kattan told the meeting in Cairo.

The evacuation of Aleppo’s last rebel enclave would end years of fighting for the city and mark a major victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

Arab League foreign ministers are expected to meet on Monday to discuss the situation further.

(Reporting by Mostafa Salem; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Catherine Evans)

IEA says OPEC, Russia oil output freeze deal may be ‘meaningless’

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A deal among some OPEC producers and Russia to freeze production is perhaps “meaningless” as Saudi Arabia is the only country with the ability to increase output, a senior executive from the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.

Brent crude futures are up more than 50 percent from a 12-year low near $27 a barrel hit early this year, bouncing back after Russia and OPEC’s Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Qatar struck an agreement last month to keep output at January levels.

Qatar has invited all 13 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and major non-OPEC producers to Doha on April 17 for another round of talks to widen the production freeze deal.

“Amongst the group of countries (participating in the meeting) that we’re aware of, only Saudi Arabia has any ability to increase its production,” said Neil Atkinson, head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets division, at an industry event.

“So a freeze on production is perhaps rather meaningless. It’s more some kind of gesture which perhaps is aimed … to build confidence that there will be stability in oil prices.”

Libya has joined Iran in snubbing the initiative, and the absence of the two OPEC producers – both with ample room to increase output – would limit the impact of any success in broadening the freeze at the April meeting.

The rise in output from Iran in the first quarter post-sanctions has been in line with IEA’s expectation of 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), Atkinson said, adding that Tehran’s output could rise again by the same amount by the third quarter.

“Iran has not exactly been flooding the market with lots more oil. It seems to be far more measured,” Atkinson said.

It will take a while for Iran to regain its pre-sanctions share in Europe, where markets have been taken over by Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iraq, he added.

The IEA, energy watchdog for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), expects the wide gap between supply and demand to narrow later this year, paving the way for an oil price recovery in 2017.

“We think the worst is over for prices … Today’s prices may not be sustainable at exactly $40 a barrel, but in this mid-$30s and upward range, we think there will be some support unless there’s a major change in fundamentals,” Atkinson said.

(Reporting by Florence Tan; Editing by Tom Hogue)

U.S. To Hold Peace Talks With Terrorists

United States officials have confirmed they will be holding peace talks with Islamic terrorist group The Taliban.

The first meeting will take place in Doha, Qatar. The Taliban have opened their “official” overseas office in Qatar. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai says his government will also send officials to negotiate peace with the terrorists. Continue reading →