Arab countries isolate Qatar; Emirate is accused of cozying to Iran and supporting terrorism

Arab countries began cutting off diplomatic relations with the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar on Monday, accusing it in general terms of supporting terrorism. Egypt accused Qatar specifically of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's state news agency reported.

A Cairo court sentenced the group's spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie, to life in prison last month for murder and violence in connection with nationwide protests in August 2013 after the military ousted elected Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi.

The official Saudi news agency reported that Saudi Arabia broke diplomatic relations — as well as all land, sea and air contacts — with Qatar to protect itself from the dangers of terrorism and extremism.

Saudi Arabia urges all brotherly countries and companies to do the same, according to the official report.

Bahrain, meanwhile, accused Qatar of backing terrorism and interfering in Bahrain's internal affairs. Like Saudi Arabia, it cut air and sea contacts and added that it was giving its citizens in Qatar 14 days to leave.

A fourth country, the United Arab Emirates, echoed the same accusations and accused Qatar of undermining regional stability.

Qatar said last week that hackers had posted fake remarks by its emir, Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, criticizing some leaders of fellow Gulf Arab states and calling for an easing of tensions with Iran, a regional adversary.

But several Gulf Cooperation Council states rejected Qatar's explanation, leaving local media to unleash a barrage of attacks accusing the emir of cozying up to Iran. Qatar has been long accused of maintaining relations with and backing Islamist movements and groups in the region.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking Monday at a bilateral meeting with Australian officials in Sydney, said the U.S. believes it is important the Gulf Cooperation Council — comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — remains intact.

Tillerson said he does not expect the diplomatic spat will have any significant impact, if any impact at all, on the unified, the unified fight against terrorism in the region or globally.

I think what we're witnessing is a growing list of some irritants in the region that have been there for some time, Tillerson told reporters during a press conference. And obviously they have now bubbled up to a level that countries decided they needed to take action in an effort to have those differences addressed.</s>By Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Four Arab nations cut diplomatic ties to Qatar early Monday morning, further deepening a rift among Gulf Arab nations over that country’s support for Islamist groups and its relations with Iran.

Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all announced they would withdraw their diplomatic staff from Qatar, a gas-rich nation that will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup and is home to a major U.S. military base. Saudi Arabia also said Qatari troops would be pulled from the ongoing war in Yemen.

The countries also were ejecting Qatar’s diplomats from their territories. The Qatari government has not responded to the severing of diplomatic ties, though it has previously denied funding extremist groups.

All the nations also said they planned to cut air and sea traffic. Saudi Arabia said it also would shut its land border with Qatar, effectively cutting off the country from the rest of the Arabian Peninsula.

It wasn’t immediately clear how Monday’s announcement would affect Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers that routinely flies through Saudi airspace. The airline did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Even before Monday, Qatar had appeared unperturbed by the growing tensions. On May 27, Qatar’s ruling emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, called Iranian President Hasan Rouhani to congratulate him on his re-election.

The call was a clear, public rebuttal of Saudi Arabia’s efforts to force Qatar to fall in line against the Shiite-ruled nation, which the Sunni kingdom sees as its No. 1 enemy and a threat to regional stability. Qatar shares a massive offshore gas field with the Islamic Republic.

Qatar is also home to the sprawling al-Udeid Air Base, which is home to the U.S. military’s Central Command and some 10,000 American troops. It wasn’t clear if the decision would affect American military operations. Central Command officials and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Saudi Arabia said it took the decision to cut diplomatic ties due to Qatar’s “embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilizing the region” including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, the Islamic State group and groups supported by Iran in the kingdom’s restive eastern province of Qatif. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry accused Qatar of taking an “antagonist approach” toward Egypt and said “all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed.”

The tiny island nation of Bahrain blamed Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain” for its decision. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the decision would affect its operations.

The decision comes after Qatar alleged in late May that hackers took over the site of its state-run news agency and published what it called fake comments from its ruling emir about Iran and Israel. Its Gulf Arab neighbors responded with anger, blocking Qatari-based media, including the Doha-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera.

Qatar long has faced criticism from its Arab neighbors over its support of Islamists. The chief worry among them is the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist political group outlawed by both Saudi Arabia and the UAE as it challenges the nations’ hereditary rule.

Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia fell out with Qatar over its backing of then-Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a Brotherhood member. In March 2014, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar over the rift. Eight months later, they returned their ambassadors as Qatar forced some Brotherhood members to leave the country and quieted others. However, the 2014 crisis did not see a land and sea blockade as threatened now.

In the time since, Qatar repeatedly and strongly denied it funds extremist groups. However, it remains a key financial patron of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and has been the home of exiled Hamas official Khaled Mashaal since 2012. Western officials also have accused Qatar of allowing or even encouraging funding of Sunni extremists like al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, once known as the Nusra Front.

Global oil prices rose 1.24 percent to $50.57 a barrel in early trading Monday in Asia amid the Gulf diplomatic crisis.

The crisis comes after U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia for a summit with Arab leaders. Since the meeting, unrest in the region has grown.

At that Saudi conference, Trump met with Qatar’s ruling emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

“We are friends, we’ve been friends now for a long time, haven’t we?” Trump asked at the meeting. “Our relationship is extremely good.”

Associated Press writers Aya Batrawy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.</s>Saudi Arabia and at least four other Arab nations are cutting all ties with Qatar, citing concerns over terrorism and regional stability and igniting debate over the rift's impacts among key U.S. allies in the Middle East.

Qatar's government "expressed deep regret over the decision" and said it was the victim of "an instigation campaign" that is meant to hurt the nation.

"Such measures are unjustified and are based on baseless and unfounded allegations," the government's foreign ministry said in a statement.

The moves came in quick succession, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the Maldives all announcing that they were ending diplomatic relations with Doha and giving Qatari diplomats and citizens days or even hours to get out of their territories. The nations are closing ports and airspace.

Saudi Arabia is also shutting its border to neighboring Qatar, locking the state out of its only over-land border crossing. Qatar is a peninsula that is otherwise surrounded by the Persian Gulf.

The Qatari government says its citizens won't be affected, but news of the closing sent citizens rushing to grocery stores to stock up on supplies. The country imports 90 percent of its food, "mostly through the land border with Saudi Arabia," according to the UAE site The National.

"I've never seen anything like it – people have trolleys full of food and water," a resident told Doha News while at a Carrefour grocery store in a mall.

Saudi Arabia's government says it's cutting ties to protect itself "from the dangers of terrorism and extremism," the Saudi Press Agency reports.

The Sunni-ruled Arab nations are unhappy with Qatar's ties to Shiite-ruled Iran. They also say its authorities have supported both ISIS and al Qaeda. Egypt has led the way in faulting Qatar for giving a safe haven to leading figures of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Saudi news agency also said Libya and Yemen had cut ties with Qatar, but those claims have not been independently verified.

Qatar blamed Egypt for coordinating the severance of ties and said the other countries' goal is "the imposition of guardianship over the State."

As for the U.S. response, both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis say they don't think the decision will affect the fight against terrorism.

"I do not expect that this will have any significant impact — if any impact at all — on the unified fight against terrorism in the region or globally," Tillerson said in Sydney, where he's attending security talks along with Mattis.

Mattis predicted the diplomatic rift will be healed, but he wasn't sure when.

"I believe Iran's actions speak louder than anyone's words," Mattis said, "and they are going to incite the international community in that region to try to block them."

NPR's David Welna, who is traveling with Tillerson and Mattis, notes that the rift among U.S. allies "comes just 10 days after President Trump addressed an anti-terrorism summit of Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, and some see Trump's siding there with Sunni monarchs and his rhetoric against Iran as having given a kind of green light to blackballing this Gulf nation."

As David notes, "the biggest U.S. air base in the Middle East is in Qatar, while the Navy's fifth fleet is based in Bahrain."</s>Flights to Qatar from India will be costlier. There would be no disruption of flight services between India and Qatar or vice-versa, but the travel time will be longer. Saudi Arabia, Baharain among other countries on Monday cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar accusing the country of supporting terrorism.

The flights between India and Qatar would have a longer journey to make after Saudi and Bahrain closed their airspace for flights from Qatar.

The UAE has told Indian carriers that their aircraft overflying or crossing its airspace on India-Doha route must take its permission before doing so.

Flights from places other than north India like Mumbai and the south will have to take a much longer route: fly north over the Arabian Sea, enter Iran and then fly straight over the Persian Gulf to Doha. If UAE denies permission, then the same would have to be taken on return.

Jet Airways, AI Express and IndiGo and and Qatar Airways fly between India and Doha. Those QA flights flying from Delhi to Qatar will not be affected as they will fly over Pakistan and then enter Iran. The rest of the flights will be affected.

With UAE banning Qatari-registered planes from its airspace, flights between the West and Doha may have to take a longer route via Iran.

These factors would result in longer flying time which automatically would mean that the flying cost too would go up. There would be more fueling and this would lead to the cost shooting up.

Indian carriers also face another problem as Bahrain is the alternative airport for their aircraft headed to Doha. If for some reason an aircraft has to divert then it will not be able to fly directly to Qatar from Baharain.

Jet Airways has five daily flights between Doha and Delhi, Mumbai, Cochin, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode. Air India Express has a daily flight between Doha and Calicut; four times a week from Mumbai and thrice weekly from Mangalore. IndiGo has a daily flight from Delhi and Mumbai and plans to start from Kozhikode in July. QA lists 13 Indian cities as destinations, including all the metros.</s>Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Maldives cut diplomatic ties Monday with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism.

Qatar's Foreign Affairs Ministry said the measures are "unjustified and are based on baseless and unfounded allegations."

Last month, reports quoted Qatari leader Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani as questioning U.S. hostility toward Iran and claiming "tensions" between Qatar and the United States. Those reports were published on the Qatar News Agency website.

Qatar said it had been the victim of a "shameful cybercrime." Despite Doha's official denial, media outlets in several Gulf countries reported the emir's comments as fact.

Although Qatar claims the posted comments were false, the country has long been seen by its neighbors as supporting Islamists in the region - particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist political group outlawed by both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Doha before in 2014 over its backing of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a Brotherhood member. Eight months later, the envoys returned when Qatar forced a number of Brotherhood members to leave the country.

United States: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he does not expect Monday's actions to have an impact on the fight against terrorism in the region or globally. He urged all of the parties to address their disagreements.

Tillerson said that if there's any role the U.S. can play "in terms of helping them address those" issues, "we think it is important" that the Gulf Cooperation Council "remain unified."

Saudi Arabia: "(Qatar) embraces multiple terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS (Islamic State) and al-Qaida," Saudi state news agency SPA said. Saudi Arabia also shut down Qatar-based Al Jazeera news' local office Monday, according to state media.

Egypt: Through its state news agency said that Qatar's policy "threatens Arab national security and sows the seeds of strife and division within Arab societies according to a deliberate plan aimed at the unity and interests of the Arab nation."</s>Qatari diplomats ejected and land, air and sea traffic routes cut off in row over terror and regional stability

The Gulf has been hit by its biggest diplomatic crisis in years after Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar, accusing it of destabilising the region with its support for Islamist groups.



The countries said they would halt all land, air and sea traffic with Qatar, eject its diplomats and order Qatari citizens to leave the Gulf states within 14 days. Shoppers in the Qatari capital, Doha, meanwhile packed supermarkets amid fears the country, which relies on imports from its neighbours, would face food shortages after Saudi Arabia closed its sole land border.

Social media reports from Doha showed supermarket shelves empty as nervous consumers began to worry that stocks of food and water would run out. As much as 40% of Qatar’s food comes over the Saudi border.

The small but very wealthy nation, the richest in the world per capita, was also expelled from a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.



What is Qatar's position in the Middle East? Qatar occupies a tiny headland on the Arabian peninsula, with a single land border with Saudi Arabia and across the sea from Iran. The former British protectorate gained its independence in 1971 and has since been ruled by the al-Thani family. With the highest per capita income in the world, the tiny monarchy has grown fabulously wealthy on the back of massive oil and natural gas reserves. Tensions with its Gulf Arab neighbours have grown in recent years over support for Islamist movements that emerged from the Arab Spring. It now finds itself isolated and backed into a corner.

The coordinated move dramatically escalates a dispute over Qatar’s support of Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and its perceived tolerance of Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival, Iran. The dispute is the worst to hit the Gulf since the formation of the Gulf Co-operation Council in 1981.

Qatar’s foreign affairs ministry said the measures were unjustified and based on false claims and assumptions. As the Qatari stock market tumbled and oil prices rose, it accused its fellow Gulf states of violating its sovereignty.

“The state of Qatar has been subjected to a campaign of lies that have reached the point of complete fabrication,” a statement said. “It reveals a hidden plan to undermine the state of Qatar.”

Saudi Arabia said it took the decision to cut diplomatic ties owing to Qatar’s “embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilising the region”, including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Islamic State and groups supported by Iran in Saudi Arabia’s restive eastern province of Qatif.



Egypt’s foreign ministry accused Qatar of taking an “antagonist approach” towards the country and said “all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed”. It gave the Qatari ambassador 48 hours to leave Egypt, and ordered its own chargé d’affaires in Qatar to return to Cairo within 48 hours.



The tiny island nation of Bahrain blamed its decision on Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities, and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain”.

In a sign of Qatar’s growing isolation, Yemen’s internationally backed government – which no longer holds its capital and large portions of the country – joined the move to break relations, as did the Maldives and the government based in eastern Libya

There effect on air travel in the region was immediate. Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers, said it was suspending all flights to Saudi Arabia. Etihad, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier, said it would suspend flights to Qatar “until further notice”. Emirates, the Dubai-based carrier, announced it would suspend Qatar flights starting on Tuesday, and Dubai-based budget carrier flydubai said it would suspend flights to and from Doha from Tuesday.



Egypt announced its airspace will be closed to all Qatari airplanes from Tuesday.

Monday’s diplomatic moves came two weeks after four Arab countries blocked Qatar-based media over the appearance of comments attributed to the Qatari emir that praised Iran. Qatar said hackers had taken over the website of its state-run news agency and faked the comments.

Saudi Arabia's power play leaves Qatar with little room to manoeuvre Read more

A senior Iranian official said the decision to sever ties with Qatar would not help end the crisis in the Middle East. Hamid Aboutalebi, deputy chief of staff for Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, tweeted: “The era of cutting diplomatic ties and closing borders is over … it is not a way to resolve crisis. These countries have no other option but to start regional dialogue.”

The US military said it had “no plans to change our posture in Qatar” amid the diplomatic crisis. Qatar is home to the sprawling al-Udeid airbase, which houses the US military’s central command and 10,000 American troops.

Qatar has long faced criticism from its Arab neighbours over its support of Islamists and Doha has long welcomed senior figures from Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Saudi’s chief worry is the Muslim Brotherhood, the transnational Sunni Islamist political movement outlawed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which regards it as posing a threat to their system of hereditary rule.



Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia fell out with Qatar over its backing of the former Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, a Brotherhood member, and in March 2014, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar over the rift.

Diplomatic relations resumed eight months later when Qatar forced some Brotherhood members to leave the country and quieted others but the 2014 crisis did not involve a land and sea blockade, as is threatened now.

The Qatar Council issued a fresh statement on Monday afternoon seeking to reassure its citizens that it had taken the necessary steps to ensure normal life continued, including by keeping sea ports open for trade and making sure that air space with countries not involved in the boycott remained open. It said it would not expel the 300,000 Egyptians working in Qatar as a reprisal.

Qatar blockade could hit state airline, al-Jazeera and World Cup Read more

Saudi Arabia however kept up the pressure on Qatar by saying it was withdrawing al-Jazeera’s media licence and closing its Saudi office, saying the Qatar-funded broadcaster had promoted terrorist plots and supported the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

It also banned all Qatar flagged vessels from is ports and lorries due to enter Qatar over the Saudi border were blocked from doing so.

The Saudi aim is to apply pressure to make Qatar change its foreign policy, but questioning the legitimacy of a fellow monarch could prove to be a double edged sword for any Gulf ruler.

Since 2014, Qatar has repeatedly and strongly denied that it funds extremist groups. However, it remains a key financial patron of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and has been the home of the exiled Hamas official Khaled Mashaal since 2012. One of the first signs of any compromise will be the withdrawal of Hamas leaders from Doha.

Western officials have also accused Qatar of allowing or even encouraging funding of Sunni extremists such as al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, once known as the Nusra Front.

The row comes only two weeks after the US president, Donald Trump, visited the Middle East to seal major defence contracts with Saudi Arabia worth $110bn, set up an anti-extremist institute in Riyadh and urge the Gulf states to build an alliance against Iran.



The Saudis are in part countering the allegation of funding extremism, frequently made in Washington and in the past by Trump himself, by pointing the finger at Qatar for backing terrorism.

Speaking in Australia, the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, played down the seriousness of the diplomatic dispute and said it would not affect counter-terrorism efforts.

“I think what we’re witnessing is a growing list of irritants in the region that have been there for some time, and they’ve bubbled up so that countries have taken action in order to have those differences addressed,” he said.</s>Four Arab nations cut diplomatic ties to Qatar early Monday morning, further deepening a rift among Gulf Arab nations over that country’s support for Islamist groups and its relations with Iran.

Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all announced they would withdraw their diplomatic staff from Qatar, a gas-rich nation that will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Saudi Arabia also said Qatari troops would be pulled from the ongoing war in Yemen.

The countries also were ejecting Qatar’s diplomats from their territories. The Qatari government has not responded to the severing of diplomatic ties, though it has previously denied funding extremist groups.

The nations also said they planned to cut air and sea traffic. Saudi Arabia said it also would shut its land border with Qatar, effectively cutting off the country from the rest of the Arabian Peninsula.

It wasn’t immediately clear how Monday’s announcement would affect Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers that routinely flies through Saudi airspace. The airline did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Qatar is also home to the sprawling Al Udeid Air Base, which houses the U.S. military’s Central Command and some 10,000 troops. It wasn’t clear whether the decision would affect U.S. military operations. Central Command officials and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Saudi Arabia said it made the decision to cut diplomatic ties because of Qatar’s “embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilizing the region” including the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Islamic State and groups supported by Iran in the kingdom’s restive eastern province of Qatif. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry accused Qatar of taking an “antagonist approach” toward Egypt and said “all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed.”

The tiny island nation of Bahrain blamed Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain” for its decision. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, based in Bahrain, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the decision would affect its operations.

The decision comes after Qatar alleged in late May that hackers took over the site of its state-run news agency and published what it called fake comments from its ruling emir about Iran and Israel. Its Gulf Arab neighbors responded with anger, blocking Qatar-based media, including the Doha-based satellite news network Al Jazeera.

Qatar long has faced criticism from its Arab neighbors over its support of Islamists. The chief worry among them is the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni Islamist political group outlawed by both Saudi Arabia and the UAE as it challenges the nations’ hereditary rule.

Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia fell out with Qatar over its backing of then-Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a Brotherhood member. In March 2014, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain recalled their ambassadors from Qatar over the rift. Eight months later, they returned their ambassadors as Qatar forced some Brotherhood members to leave the country and quieted others. However, the 2014 crisis did not see a land and sea blockade as threatened now.

In the time since, Qatar repeatedly and strongly denied it funds extremist groups. But it remains a key financial patron of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and has been the home of exiled Hamas official Khaled Mashaal since 2012. Western officials also have accused Qatar of allowing or even encouraging funding of Sunni extremists such as Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria, once known as the Nusra Front.

Qatar also maintains ties with Iran as it shares a massive offshore gas field with the Islamic Republic.

The crisis also comes after President Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia for a summit with Arab leaders. Since the meeting, unrest in the region has grown.

At that Saudi conference, Trump met with Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

“We are friends, we’ve been friends now for a long time, haven’t we?” Trump asked at the meeting. “Our relationship is extremely good.”</s>Doha, Qatar (CNN) Qatar is open to mediation to resolve the crisis that has seen a group of nearby countries move to isolate the emirate over claims it supports Islamist extremist groups, its foreign minister says.

"We are willing to sit and talk," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said Tuesday in an interview with CNN's Becky Anderson.

He said the "progressive and modern" country believes in diplomacy and promoting peace in the Middle East.

"We are not a superpower here, we are not believing in solving things with confrontation," he said.

Al-Thani insisted his country was combating terror financing and "protecting the world from potential terrorists."

But a key architect of the blockade on Qatar told CNN's John Defterios on Tuesday that Gulf countries are "fed up with this sort of duplicity" from Qatar.

"Very, very huge logistical, financial support for extremist groups, support also for some terrorist organizations such as al-Nusra (Front) and some organizations in Libya and in our area, such as the Sinai and other areas. This is really at the crux of the issue," the UAE's minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, said from Dubai.

"There is no more trust," he said, adding, "it is time for cooler heads, to restructure Qatar's approach on foreign policy."

The UAE and the other nations had another message for Qatar, Gargash said: "If we don't see that change then Qatar needs to understand that it's on its own and it has to sort of deal and run its economy and run its country on its own."

"With all due respect, this statement is full of contradictions because it is saying that we are supporting Iran and on the other hand supporting the extremist groups in Syria, and (that) we are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi or in Yemen and we are supporting the (Iranian-backed) Houthis from the other side. In all battlefields, there are adversaries," he told CNN.

"About our support to the Saudi opposition or the sectarian (movements) in al-Qatif, this is totally false information. Actually the cooperation between our security and intelligence agencies between Qatar and Saudi has been serving the purpose of the national security of Saudi."

Referring to tweets Tuesday from US President Donald Trump about the diplomatic crisis , the foreign minister said that during Trump's recent visit to the region, he and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim discussed the issue "that the funding of terrorism needs to be stopped by various countries."

He said that there have been multiple reports issued by official agencies in the US "commending our role in combating terror financing."

Qatari citizens have been told they have 14 days to leave Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, and those countries also banned their own citizens from entering Qatar.

Some scrambled to catch the last flights back home. Kholoud Alemadi, a Qatari-British actress, was distraught as she headed back to Doha from Dubai, where she had been starring in special shows for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Qatar is home to almost 2 million foreign nationals -- mainly workers from India, Nepal and the Philippines. A Filipino senator urged the country's government to make plans to evacuate its citizens if the standoff worsens, Philippine state media reported. The Philippines announced Tuesday that it was banning its citizens from going to work in Qatar while it assesses the situation.</s>Meanwhile, Qatari residents and visitors in the UAE have 14 days to leave the country for precautionary security reasons, while the UAE is giving Qatari diplomats 48 hours as of this morning to leave the UAE.

The command attributed its decision to Qatar’s practices that reinforced terrorism and supported terror groups in Yemen, including Al Qaeda and Daesh.

Egypt “has made a decision to sever its diplomatic relations with the state of Qatar“, the foreign affairs ministry said in a statement that also announced the closure of ports and airports to Qatari vessels and planes.

All the nations also said they planned to cut air and sea traffic to the peninsular country.

Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers that routinely flies through Saudi airspace, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Oil giant Saudi Arabia accused Qatar of backing militant groups and broadcasting their ideology, in an apparent reference to Qatar’s influential state-owned satellite channel al Jazeera.

Yemen’s internationally recognized government has cut relations with Qatar and says it supports the decision by the Saudi-led coalition to end Qatar’s participation in the war on the Houthis there.

After Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar in March 2014, the Qatari stock market immediately tumbled 2.3 percent and remained weak for about three weeks, before rebounding strongly as Qatar entered MSCI‘s emerging market index.

Etihad, the Abu Dhabi-based carrier, said it would suspend flights to Qatar “until further notice“.

Pakistan, which has a significant Shi’ite Muslim population, has in recent years been caught between the feud between its Sunni ally, Saudi Arabia, and Shi’ite-majority neighbour Iran.

David Cameron agreed to an inquiry into foreign funding of Islamist extremists in 2015, as part of a deal with the Liberal Democrats in return for their support on the extension of air strikes into Syria.

Saudi Arabia said it would “begin immediate legal measures with friendly, sisterly countries and worldwide companies to implement that measure as quickly as possible for all types of transit from and to the state of Qatar“.

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have urged Theresa May to publish the report.

Oman remains the only GCC member to maintain ties with Qatar.

The state-run company was looking for up to two gasoil cargoes a month for delivery over July to September in a tender that closes on Monday.</s>PanARMENIAN.Net – Gulf states on Monday, June 5 cut diplomatic ties with neighbouring Qatar and kicked it out of a military coalition, less than a month after US President Donald Trump visited the region to cement ties with powerhouse Saudi Arabia, AFP reports.

In the region’s most serious diplomatic crisis in years, Qatar’s Gulf neighbours Riyadh, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates as well as Egypt all announced they were severing ties with gas-rich Qatar.

Riyadh cut diplomatic relations and closed borders with its neighbour to “protect its national security from the dangers of terrorism and extremism,” the official Saudi Press Agency said.

A Saudi official cited by SPA said Riyadh decided to “sever diplomatic and consular ties with Qatar, and to close all land, sea and aviation ports.”

The “decisive” measure was due to the “gross violations committed by authorities in Qatar over the past years,” the Saudi statement said.

Many expatriate and Saudi travellers use Qatar as their gateway into the kingdom.
Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, the Maldives, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the internationally recognized government of Yemen sever diplomatic ties with Qatar, ordering Qatari citizens in those countries to be expelled as well as cutting all land, air and sea connections. "National security," "media incitement" and Qatar's support of Iran are variously cited.