People buy food at a supermarket in Doha, capital of Qatar, on June 6, 2017. Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen joined Saudi Arabia and Egypt in severing relations with gas-rich Qatar, with Riyadh accusing Doha of supporting groups, including some backed by Iran. (Xinhua/Nikku)
by Zuo Chang, Yang Yuanyong
CAIRO, June 7 (Xinhua) -- The international community has been striving to mediate the crisis among the countries concerned since the escalating tensions between Qatar and its fellow Arab nations culminated when Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Libya and Yemen abruptly announced to sever diplomatic ties with the Gulf gas-rich state, accusing it of supporting terrorism and interfering with internal affairs.
According to presidential sources, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has held phone calls with leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, Jordan's King Abdullah II and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to ease the unprecedented diplomatic dispute in the Middle East.
"I want to clearly say we disapprove the sanctions on Qatar," Erdogan was quoted by state-run Anadolu Agency as saying on Tuesday.
"Turkey will discharge every responsibility for our part," Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday, quoted by local TV channel CNNTurk.
As an important trade partner of Turkey, Qatar has so far invested 2.2 billion U.S. dollars in the transcontinental country, with investments on the rise in the past four years.
Also on Tuesday, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah paid an urgent visit to Saudi Arabia to seek a political solution to the crisis around Doha with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, Kuwait News Agency reported.
On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson encouraged all sides to "sit down together to resolve irritants," despite Washington's long-time criticism of Qatar's role in promoting radical ideology, which Doha has repeatedly denied.
Meanwhile, Sudan, Algeria and Iraq all expressed concerns about the diplomatic crisis around Qatar, urging all Arab countries concerned to avoid escalation and solve the problem through dialogue.
In Iran, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday that increasing tension in the relations among Arab states is a threat to the interests of regional states, official IRNA news agency reported.
"Amid the threat of terrorism, extremism to the region and the world and with the continuation of occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, the rising tension among regional states benefits neither the regional nations nor governments and is a threat to the interests of all," Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said in a statement.
The diplomatic crisis, however, came less than two weeks after state Qatar News Agency (QNA) released a statement by Emir Al-Thani who called Iran an "Islamic power," which Qatar later said was "fake" as QNA's website had been "hacked."
Late Tuesday, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said on Qatar-based Al Jazeera television that his country was ready for international mediation, adding that the emir had postponed a national speech on the crisis to leave Kuwait more room to "proceed and communicate with the parties to the crisis and to try to contain the issue."
Doha also decided not to respond in kind, he added.
As a member of the Saudi-led Arab coalition, Qatar has been involved in the military campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen since March 2015.
It is not the first time that the small Island state has been in the spotlight of a diplomatic crisis in the Middle East. On March 3, 2014, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE recalled their ambassadors to Qatar and severed diplomatic ties with the country until eight months later when Qatar agreed to deport seven senior figures of Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.
