(MENAFN) Qatar will not be barred from the upcoming Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince said, predicting that the standoff with Doha could last a long time.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman's comments were made to local editors during a visit to Egypt this week and published Wednesday in Al-Shorouk newspaper.
In early June, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism and destabilizing the Middle East, while Qatar, for its part, slammed the measures as unjustified, stressing that they are based on false claims and assumptions. It also denied the accusations, describing attempts to diplomatically isolate it as a violation of international law and its national sovereignty.
The four threatened to impose further sanctions on Doha if it failed to accept a long list of demands, including the closure of the Qatar-funded Al-Jazeera television and scaling down ties with Iran, but the Middle East country stressed that the demands by Saudi Arabia and its allies were impossible to meet.
The split among the Arab states erupted after US President Donald Trump visited Riyadh where he accused Tehran of "destabilizing interventions" in Arab lands.
The prince, for his part, described Iran, Turkey and militant groups as the "contemporary triangle of evil."
He said Saudi Arabia was seeking to end the close relations between Iran on the one hand and Russia and Syria on the other.
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