Alwaght- Saudi king Salman has officially invited Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to participate in the upcoming [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council ([P]GCC) summit, which is set to take place in the Saudi capital city of Riyadh later this month.
The official Qatar News Agency said in a tweet the monarch had got “an invitation from the King of Saudi Arabia” for the meeting, but it did not say whether Sheikh Tamim would travel to Saudi Arabia.
The report came as a surprise since Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, has been embroiled in a diplomatic and trade boycott against Qatar for a year and a half.
The Arabic language Al Aan online newspaper, citing diplomatic sources, reported last week that Secretary General of the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Abdul Latif bin Rashid al-Zayani was going to visit Doha to invite the Qatari emir to attend the the 39th annual summit of the regional grouping.
Last month, Kuwait’s Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled al-Jarallah confirmed that all six GCC countries would be attending the annual summit of the council, which is set to take place on December 9.
Jarallah said the summit could present a “hope to resolve the [Persian] Gulf crisis and solve the differences.”
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt all cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5 last year, after officially accusing it of “sponsoring terrorism.”
The administration of the Saudi-backed and former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, Libya, the Maldives, Djibouti, Senegal and the Comoros later joined the camp in ending diplomatic ties with Doha. Jordan downgraded its diplomatic relations as well.
Qatar's Foreign Ministry later announced that the decision to cut diplomatic ties was unjustified and based on false claims and assumptions.
On June 9, 2017, Qatar strongly dismissed allegations of supporting terrorism after the Saudi regime and its allies blacklisted dozens of individuals and entities purportedly associated with Doha.
Later that month, Saudi Arabia and its allies released a 13-point list of demands, including the closure of Al Jazeera television network and downgrade of relations with Iran, in return for the normalization of diplomatic relations with Doha.
The document containing the demands by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain also asked Qatar to sever all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement.
Qatar rejected the demands as "unreasonable."
