Qatar Urges World to Adopt 'Inclusive' Approach toward Iran, Region

TEHRAN (defapress) – The Qatari foreign minister urged international powers to be more inclusive in their approach to the region, saying one-sided initiatives that excluded either the Iranians or Palestinians did not work.

News ID: 75857

Date: 26 February 2019 - 14:23

“Anyone that looks at the situation right now – the polarization in the region – is quite certain that things will not remain like this,” Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, said, according to the Guardian on Tuesday.

“You cannot keep people under oppression for a long time, so to prevent this instability from happening, we just want leaders to start reforming. We have to practice preventative diplomacy rather than reactive diplomacy.”

He also called on Saudi Arabia to cooperate with the inquiry set up by the UN to look into the death of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Khashoggi, a one-time royal insider who had been critical of the crown prince recently, was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in early October.

Following weeks of denial of any involvement in Khashoggi's disappearance, the kingdom eventually acknowledged the “premeditated” murder, but has sought to distance the heir to the Saudi throne from the assassination.

A Saudi prosecutor said Khashoggi’s body had been dismembered, removed from the diplomatic mission and handed to an unidentified “local cooperator.”

The CIA is said to have concluded that the crown prince was behind the killing, but US President Donald Trump is yet to endorse the assessment.

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