Emirati diplomat to AP: 'Nothing to negotiate' with Qatar
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A top Emirati diplomat said Wednesday "there's nothing to negotiate" with Qatar over a growing diplomatic dispute about the energy-rich nation's alleged funding of terror groups, signaling Arab countries trying to isolate it won't back down.
Speaking in a rare interview, Emirati Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash told The Associated Press that Qatar has "chosen to ride the tiger of extremism and terrorism" and now needed to pay the price.
Gargash said Qatar "absolutely" should expel members of Hamas, stop its support of terror groups "with al-Qaida DNA" around the world and rein in the many media outlets it funds, chief among them the Doha-based satellite news network Al-Jazeera.
While applauding a Kuwaiti effort to mediate the crisis, Gargash said Emirati and Saudi officials planned to concede nothing to Qatar, an international air travel hub now cut off from some of the skies around it and blocked from receiving the trucks full of food it relies on to feed its citizens.
Their "fingerprints are all over the place" in terror funding, Gargash said. "Enough is enough."
