Qatar’s official news agency confirmed that Doha’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammed Al Attiyah took part in the GCC Foreign Ministers meeting held in Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh. The GCC statement was released just before midnight after the meeting concluded.
It marked the foreign minister’s first visit to Saudi Arabia since the kingdom, along with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar in an unprecedented public protest largely believed to be spurred by Doha’s support for the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group in the region.
Thursday’s statement said the GCC agreed on a "collective framework" in which the policies of the bloc’s member states "would not affect the interests, security and stability of its members and would not tamper with the sovereignty of any of its members." However, the statement did not say whether ambassadors would be reinstated.
The ambassadors were officially withdrawn early March after the three Gulf nations said Qatar failed to uphold its end of a security agreement to stop interfering in other nations’ politics and supporting organisations that threaten the Gulf’s stability. They said the move was made to protect their security.
