Preparations are underway for a meeting of the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain scheduled to take place in Manama, possibly before the end of July. A quartet meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was scheduled to take place on Wednesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to discuss the ongoing crisis. The Manama meeting is designed to follow up on the diplomatic momentum instigated, upon an Egyptian initiative, in Cairo last week with the foreign ministers of the four countries having met 5 July to discuss their position on Qatar, on which they imposed a large diplomatic-economic boycott over a month ago to protest “its role in promoting terror and in interfering in the internal affairs of” these four Arab states. A communiqué that the four foreign ministers adopted at the end of their meeting expressed “deep regret” for what the four states said was “a very negative response from Qatar” to a Kuwaiti mediation effort that was designed to end the “Qatar crisis”. Qatar, according to informed sources, had not fully closed the door to the Kuwaiti diplomatic move that aimed to secure Doha's accommodation of a good part of a list of demands put forward by the four Arab states to “end the support that Qatar lends to the promotion of terror and interference in the internal affairs of other states”. The list has included demands to either extradite or expel political opposition figures, including Muslim Brotherhood figures that Egypt and the UAE are keen to see arrested, or Shia figures that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia would like to have detained. It also included demands on the suspension of the operation of Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, blamed by the four countries for encouraging the Arab revolutions in 2010-2011 and for supporting the Islamist groups that are trying to topple regimes in several Arab countries. The demands also included reduction of cooperation with Iran — a key demand for Riyadh that is practically in the driver's seat in the diplomatic war with Qatar. According to informed sources, Doha had shown some willingness to accommodate the Saudis, but not on the Qatari-Iranian relations front, and to a lesser degree the Emirates. Nonetheless, it made no clear promises and declined to commit to any deadlines on honouring any demands. The four countries, whose foreign ministers are preparing for the Manama meeting, were considering some “further economic and diplomatic measures” should Qatar remains determined to turn its back on their demands. “We are not necessarily going to a confrontational level of escalation but we are planning to make our point get across that we need Qatar to commit to stop tampering with regional politics the way it does,” said a diplomat who is close to preparations for the Manama meeting. He added, however, that “the next step will be very carefully measured”. This, he said, is about “a plan of action that is designed to get Qatar to cooperate, and it is of course also about accommodating the concerns of leading Western countries who have been sending repeated signals of worry over this diplomatic confrontation”. Speaking in Cairo, several European diplomats said that their respective capitals have indeed been sending clear demands to all the concerned four anti-Qatar Arab capitals, especially to Riyadh, to slow down and pursue a negotiated settlement to the matter. “In all honesty, we see this as a battle of Gulf emirs on power in the Gulf and on coalitions within the Gulf. The situation in the Middle East is already so tense and we cannot encourage the inter-Gulf feud to worsen an already fragile region,” said one. According to another Cairo-based European diplomat, “it is very hard for the world to just overlook its interests with Qatar, no matter how keen key world capitals are on its relation with Saudi Arabia.” This, the same diplomat said, is obviously the case with the US, whose President Donald Trump had appealed to the four countries met in Cairo on Wednesday (5 July) to pursue a negotiated deal to the conflict. The US has openly qualified the situation in the Gulf as a family feud and made a tentative offer to host a meeting to help resolve it. And according to a Washington based Arab diplomat, “while it is true that there are different alliances in the US administration about Saudi Arabia and the UAE, on the one hand, and Qatar, on the other, it is perfectly clear that nobody in DC wants to see the situation escalate. They know it might take a while to resolve, let us say a few more months, but that is different from having a diplomatic escalation.” Ahead of the Manama meeting Tillerson arrived in Kuwait on a mission to give a push to diplomatic mediation. Tillerson had already met with Emir of Kuwait Gaber Al-Sabah, who is said by informed Arab diplomats to be of the opinion that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are pushing it too far. He is planning to visit Doha. There are no final plans for visits to Riyadh or Abu Dhabi. An informed Western diplomat said that the US secretary of state is in the region for about a working week and that he would take it one step at a time. According to the same diplomat there are two priorities for the Tillerson mission: first, to make sure that neither side of the diplomatic dispute takes the escalation path; second, to create an opening for a negotiated deal that would keep the Gulf — where the US has key military bases and large economic interests — stable. Upon the beginning of the Tillerson mission CNN showed a leaked document that supposedly has the agreement of all the six GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) members to accommodate each other's strategic interests, with the support of Egypt having been a clear priority by former Saudi Monarch King Abdullah. Also upon the beginning of the Tillerson mission Doha threatened that it would unilaterally quit the GCC to protest the diplomatic offensive, a threat that Riyadh qualified as an attempt to dismantle the unity of the Gulf. As Al-Ahram Weekly went to press, informed diplomatic sources were not reporting any breakthrough from the early hours of the Tillerson talks, which come back to back with an earlier diplomatic mission by UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. However, sources were saying that “this is not a mission to be quickly delivered”, with some expecting a few more weeks before a breakthrough is in the making.
