By AYA BATRAWY
Source: Yahoo News
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) —
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain said Wednesday they
have recalled their ambassadors from Qatar in the clearest move yet
underscoring their apparent displeasure over Doha's support for the
Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group in Egypt and elsewhere the region.
The three Gulf
Arab states made the announcement in a joint statement on state media,
saying Qatar had breached a regional security deal. They said the move
was made to protect their security.
Tensions
between the three and Doha intensified following the ouster of Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak in Arab Spring protests in early 2011. Mubarak
was long seen as a reliable Saudi ally and one whose disdain for
Islamist groups was in line with the kingdom's own.
Qatar's
massive financial and public support for Mubarak's successor, President
Mohammed Morsi, who hails from the Brotherhood, stood at odds with UAE
and Saudi policies — as did its condemnation of Morsi's ouster last July
by the Egyptian military, following days of massive protests in Cairo
against the Islamist president.
At
home, both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have cracked down on Islamist
groups with links to the Brotherhood, which they see as a threat to
their ruling systems. They are both staunch supporters of Egypt's new
military-backed government, which subsequently launched sweeping
crackdowns on Morsi and his Brotherhood supporters.
The
joint Gulf statement said Qatar's ruler Emir Sheik Tamim bin Hamad Al
Thani failed to uphold a security agreement that he signed in late
November in Saudi Arabia. The emir of Kuwait was a witness to the
meeting in Riyadh and the agreement was endorsed by other members in the
six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.
The agreement called on all GCC
members not to interfere, "whether directly or indirectly" in another
member nation's internal affairs. It also stipulated that GCC countries
would not support organizations or individuals that threaten the
security and stability of Arabian Peninsula countries "either through
direct security work or by attempting to influence politics."
The
language appeared to have been shorthand for support for the
Brotherhood and Qatar's funding of the Doha-based pan-Arab Al-Jazeera
network.
However, three months
after signing the agreement, no action was taken by Qatar despite
"great efforts" by the Gulf Arab nations to reach out to Doha's
leadership to fulfill its side of the deal, said the Saudi-UAE-Bahrain
statement.
Details of the November agreement were not made public until Wednesday.
Saudi analyst Anwar Edshki said the decision was a warning to Qatar to stop inciting violence by Islamists in Egypt.
"It is Qatar's right to support
the Muslim Brotherhood, but not its right to threaten security in Egypt
and incite the (people on the) street," he said.
Edshki,
who chairs the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies in
Saudi Arabia, said Qatar's policies have created chaos in Libya, Yemen,
Syria and Egypt. However, what particularly disturbed Saudi Arabia and
the UAE more recently was how Qatar allowed Islamic cleric Youssef
el-Qaradawi to continue attacking the policies of these countries
publicly.
The withdrawal of
ambassadors from Qatar came after a meeting Tuesday in Riyadh of GCC
foreign ministers that tried to "persuade" Qatar to keep up its end of
the deal.
"However, all these
efforts have not resulted, with great regret, in the consent of the
State of Qatar to adhere to these procedures," the statement said. "So
the three countries have to start taking whatever they deem appropriate
to protect their security and stability by withdrawing their ambassadors
from the State of Qatar, as of today."
Though
Wednesday's announcement was unprecedented for the region, last month
the UAE signaled it was losing patience with Qatar when it summoned
Doha's ambassador to formally protest the comments of the outspoken
pro-Brotherhood el-Qaradawi who criticized the Gulf country's policies
toward Islamist groups on Qatari TV.
The Emirati leadership said Qatar should stop the Egyptian-born cleric from expressing comments critical of the UAE.
Even
though the UAE was part of Wednesday's three-state announcement, its
ambassador to Qatar has not been present in Doha for several months.
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