Alwaght- The Emir of Qatar abruptly left an Arab League summit in Tunisia early, the Persian Gulf state's official QNA news agency said Sunday, without giving details on why.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani quit the meeting "after attending the opening ceremony", it said, with no further details.
A Tunisian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Qatari leader had walked out during the speech of League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit, and "has left Tunisia". Aboul Gheit is an Egyptian and once served as his country's Foreign Minister.
Qatar is at the center of a bitter Persian Gulf standoff since June 2017, when Saudi Arabia along with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain severed ties with Doha.
The Saudi-led bloc accuses Doha of supporting extremist groups and being too close to Iran, charges Qatar denies.
Held in Tunisia's capital, the 30th Arab League summit kicked off on Sunday against the backdrop of ongoing conflicts in Syria and Yemen, instability in Libya and mass anti-government protests in Algeria and Sudan, as well as a continuing boycott of Qatar by four fellow bloc members.
Meanwhile, Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and his Sudanese counterpart, Omar al-Bashir, skipped the meeting as they contend with mass protests against their long reigns.
The readmission of Syria back into the League, from which it was suspended in 2011 following the start of a war perpetrated by foreign-backed terrorists, was expected to be on the summit's agenda. Leaders attending the summit, including UN Secretary General also reiterated Syrian sovereignty over the Golan Heights after US President Trump administration’s decision to recognize Israeli regime's annexation of the heights captured from Syria in the 1967 War.
