US Prez Trump meets Qatari emir Al Thani; appreciates role of Qatar in fighting against extremists

Washington, April 11: The United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday met Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in White House and held talks on a number of issues, including the months-long Gulf diplomatic crisis. During the meeting, President Trump lauded Qatar’s fight against extremists.

 

After the meeting, President Trump said, “We’re making sure that terrorism funding is stopped in the countries that we are really related to because I feel related.” “But those countries are stopping the funding of terrorism, and that includes U.A.E. and it includes Saudi Arabia, it includes Qatar and others. A lot of countries were funding terrorism and we’re stopping it,” he added.

President Trump later turning to Qatari Emir said, “You’ve now become a very big advocate, and we appreciate that.” However, Qatari Emir did not accept the characterization that his country had just become an ally in the fight on terrorism. He said, “I want to make something very clear that we do not and we will not tolerate with people who fund terrorism. We’ve been cooperating with the United States of America to stop funding terrorism around the region.”

Hours before the meeting, the US State Department approved the sale of 5,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon Systems (APKWS) to Qatar including 5,000 high explosive warheads. The development comes after the economic and financial impact on Qatar put by Arab quartet including United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt led blockade is fading slowly. Earlier, in the month of March last year, the United States also approved a request from Qatar to upgrade the emirate's air force operations centre.

Importantly, the United States is trying to broker an end to a Saudi-led diplomatic and economic embargo on gas-rich Qatar, and still maintains a huge air base of its own on its territory. In the month of June last year, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and several other nations cut ties with Qatar and imposed stringent economic sanctions on it over supporting extremism.

On the other side, Qatar denied all their allegations saying that they never supported Islamist militants and Shi'ite Iran. Later, Saudi and its allies issued a 13-point list of demands to end the rift on June 22 and gave Qatar 10 days to comply. However, earlier Qatar rejected to fulfill the demands.