U.S., U.K. Are Said to Propose Road Map to End Qatar Crisis

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and the U.K. proposed a road map to help resolve the standoff between a Saudi-led alliance and Qatar during Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s trip to the region last week, according to a Gulf official with direct knowledge of the matter.

The proposals include laying the grounds for direct negotiations based on an accord that resolved a previous dispute between the Gulf nations, as well as counterterrorism measures, the official said on condition of anonymity. Tillerson has also proposed measures to ease tension, including the suspension of hostile media campaigns by both sides, the official said.

U.S. and U.K. officials had no comment. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed their diplomatic and transport links with Qatar last month, accusing it of supporting Sunni extremists and Iranian-backed Shiite militants. Qatar has denied the charges.

More than six weeks into the worst crisis in the history of the Gulf Cooperation Council, analysts are detecting a shift in tone from the Saudi-led alliance that could pave the way for a solution. After presenting 13 demands that Qatar rejected, the bloc now says Doha must agree to six broad principles including combating terrorism, and denying financing and shelter to terrorist groups -- elements that were largely part of their previous accords.

“The four countries are under great pressure from the U.S. and some of the Europeans to have a diplomatic resolution to the crisis,” according to Simon Henderson, a Persian Gulf expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The 13 demands, which included shutting Al Jazeera television, ending support of the Muslim Brotherhood group and scaling back ties with Iran, didn’t “didn’t offer themselves to a diplomatic solution other than complete surrender of Qatar,” he said.

“This might be the beginning of an approach to a negotiated settlement rather than ratcheting up of tensions,” he said.

Saudi Arabia’s United Nations Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi said on Tuesday that it was important to reach agreement on the principles, while other issues such as those in the original list of demands are open to debate.

“There are principles, and some of the points within the 13 demands were tools to achieve compliance with the principles,” al-Mouallimi told reporters in New York. “We can have discussion” on how the principles are implemented, he said.

Tillerson’s shuttle diplomacy last week helped allay investor concerns that the Saudi alliance was about to impose harsher sanctions on Qatar, the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas exporter. Qatar’s credit risk, measured by credit default swaps, dropped. Stocks have also trimmed losses.

But Anwar Gargash, the U.A.E. minister of state for foreign affairs, told Bloomberg TV in London that monitoring Qatar’s compliance will be a “major” part of any agreement. He said the bloc wasn’t looking for a quick solution to the crisis.

Previous Accords

“The demands are deliberately ambiguous so as to allow Qatar to make concessions,” said Andreas Krieg, a lecturer in the department of defense studies at King’s College, London. But while Qatar will likely agree to a Gulf monitoring mechanism, it “will only accept a mechanism that works on all countries and not on Qatar alone,” he said.

Qatar and its neighbors signed two agreements in 2013 and 2014 to end a diplomatic crisis that centered on Qatar’s support of the Brotherhood.

Those documents, released earlier this month, included pledges “not to interfere in the internal affairs” of other Gulf Cooperation Council members and not to harbor people engaged in activities damaging to those countries. The 2014 pact added a condition that all signatories adopt Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.’s embrace of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s government in Egypt, which replaced one sponsored by the Brotherhood and removed by the military.

Speaking to reporters last week on his airplane after three days shuttling between Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which is mediating the crisis along with the U.S., Tillerson said the point of his visit was to listen to each side and offer “alternative ways forward” to resolve the standoff where past efforts have failed.

“There’s a changed sense of willingness to at least be open to talking to one another and that was not the case before I came,” Tillerson said.

--With assistance from Thomas Penny and Nick Wadhams

To contact the reporters on this story: Fiona MacDonald in Kuwait at fmacdonald4@bloomberg.net, Kambiz Foroohar in New York at kforoohar@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, Amy Teibel