UAE minister accuses Qatar of escalating diplomatic row

By Azernews

By Kamila Aliyeva

United Arab Emirates' (UAE) Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash has criticized Qatar's decision to ask Iran and Turkey for help, accusing the country of escalating a row with its Arab neighbors and destabilizing situation in the Middle East region.

Doha’s intention to turn to Tehran and Ankara followed the diplomatic rift in the Persian Gulf when its two biggest suppliers, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, cut trade and diplomatic ties with the country actually blocking it from food and water supplies.

Earlier in the day, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Al Thani said that Turkey would deploy its troops to Qatar for regional security reasons.

"The demand for political protection from two non-Arab states and military protection from one of them looks like a new tragic and comic chapter," Gargash posted on his official Twitter page.

The minister added that Qatar's behavior was "strange" as it "demands to respect country's sovereignty but looks for help abroad."

Despite the accusations and radical steps taken by Arab countries, Qatar has been repeatedly declaring its readiness for a dialogue and promised not to take any measures against its neighbors which could aggravate the uneasy situation.

Meanwhile, Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani Qatar will never surrender to the pressure being applied by its Arab neighbours and won't change its independent foreign policy to resolve disputes that have put the region on edge.

"We are not ready to surrender, and will never be ready to surrender, the independence of our foreign policy," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman told Al Jazeera.

Turkey has declared its full support to Qatar by offering food supplies and adopting a bill on deploying Turkish troops in Qatar.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on June 8 ratified two deals on deploying Turkish troops in Qatar and training the Gulf nation's gendarmerie

Meanwhile, Pakistan also decided to send military contingent to Qatar after a similar decision was made by Turkey.

Several Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar, accusing the latter of supporting ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other terrorists and destabilizing the situation in the Middle East. They were later joined by Libya, Yemen, the Maldives, Mauritius and Mauritania, with Jordan and Djibouti announcing they would lower the level of diplomatic contacts with Qatar. Senegal and Chad recalled their ambassadors from Doha.

Qatar denied allegations over its support to terrorism and extremism adding that the diplomatic rift was based on "baseless fabricated claims."