DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A top Emirati diplomat said Wednesday “there’s nothing to negotiate” with Qatar over a growing diplomatic dispute about the energy-rich nation’s alleged funding of terror groups, signaling Arab countries trying to isolate it won’t back down.
Speaking in a rare interview, Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash told The Associated Press that Qatar has “chosen to ride the tiger of extremism and terrorism” and now needed to pay the price.
Gargash said Qatar “absolutely” should expel members of Hamas, stop its support of terror groups “with al-Qaida DNA” around the world and rein in the many media outlets it funds, chief among them the Doha-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera.
While applauding a Kuwaiti effort to mediate the crisis, Gargash said Emirati and Saudi officials planned to concede nothing to Qatar, an international air travel hub now cut off from some of the skies around it and blocked from receiving the trucks full of food it relies on to feed its citizens.
Their “fingerprints are all over the place” in terror funding, Gargash said. “Enough is enough.”
Qatar long has denied funding extremists, and its foreign minister has struck a defiant tone in interviews, even after worried residents emptied grocery stores in its capital of Doha. Qatar relies heavily on food imports, especially those coming over its only land border with Saudi Arabia. The Arab countries have blocked Qatari vessels from entering their airspace, as well as using their seaports, and Saudi Arabia has closed off its land border.
While its flag carrier Qatar Airways now flies increasingly over Iran and Turkey, the airline has been blocked from landing elsewhere in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera offices also have been shut down by authorities in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
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Associated Press writers Geir Moulson in Berlin, Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan, and Fay Abuelgasim contributed to this report.
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