The United States on Monday said that the demands put forth by Saudi Arabia and its allies for restoring diplomatic relations with Qatar are “unrealistic”, The Guardian reported. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who is currently in Kuwait, will spend the rest of the week shuttling between Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to resolve the diplomatic crisis.
Addressing the reporters on Monday in Istanbul before Tillerson left for Kuwait, his communications adviser RC Hammond said even though some of the demands were not viable, others were worth discussing. Hammond, however, said that not only Qatar, but Riyadh and its other Arab allies also need to take steps to stop terror financing.
“It is a two-way street,” Hammond said, according to The Washington Post. “There are no clean hands here...The president [Donald Trump] has been very clear that his number one goal is to have all Arab nations to do more on the financing of terrorism.”
The US’ statement following Qatar’s rejection of the demands in June. Hammond said the US would explore ways to end the stalemate between the Gulf nations following Doha’s rejection. Hammond said the 13 demands are now “done” and not worth “revisiting as a package”. “Individually there are things in there that could work,” he said, according to Reuters.
The diplomatic standoff
On June 5, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt had severed diplomatic relations with Qatar accusing it of backing terrorism. Other countries in the region had followed. The US President had praised Saudi’s move to isolate Qatar.
The list presented to Qatar by the Arab countries demanded that it cut ties with Iran, hand over extremists and shut down Al Jazeera. It also demanded compensation and called for an end to Turkey’s military presence in Qatar, among other things.
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