Bahrain and Qatar on Wednesday agreed to restore diplomatic relations.
Bahrain had been the last holdout of four Arab nations that imposed a boycott on Qatar in 2017.
They were angered by Qatar’s alleged support for Islamist groups that rose to power in some countries following the 2011 Arab Spring protests, which the other Gulf nations viewed as terrorist organizations.
Photo: EPA
The boycott was lifted at the start of 2021, and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have restored ties with Qatar since then, with top leaders paying official visits in the past few months.
Bahrain and Qatar each issued official statements announcing the decision to restore relations following a meeting between their delegations at the Riyadh headquarters of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a six-nation bloc of which both are members.
CUTTING ALL LINKS
The four nations had severed all relations with Qatar, and at the height of the crisis there was even talk in local media of digging a trench along the 87km border between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and filling it with nuclear waste.
However, the boycott had little effect on Qatar’s economy.
The tiny Gulf country, which hosted the soccer World Cup last year, is one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, owing to its vast natural gas reserves.
Turkey, which is also friendly to some groups deemed Islamist, stepped in to aid Qatar during the crisis.
Last month, Saudi Arabia and its main regional rival, Iran, agreed to restore diplomatic ties, which had been severed in 2016, in an agreement brokered by China.
The US welcomed “any efforts to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East region,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time.
Additional reporting by AFP
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS