QNA
London
Qatar’s policy has always been to work for global peace whether in mediating among countries or in humanitarian issues, HE the Foreign Minister Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah has said, stressing that “Qatar is immune to media campaigns against it because its policies are clear to everyone”.
In an interview with London-based newspaper Al Hayat, the Foreign Minister strongly rejected claims that Doha had been playing double roles to gain international influence.
“We must distinguish between two things - between the state and its relationship with other countries, and whether these accusations are from states or from the media,” al-Attiyah said, adding: “If they are from states, I can tell you that there are no accusations from them because they really know Qatar and how it deals with the international community and how it fully shoulders its responsibilities as an active member of the international community.”
He said: “Qatar has always worked for world peace, whether in its mediation in countries where there were conflicts or countries that had problems in some borders, or in humanitarian issues and disasters, without distinction.”
He added that newspapers, particularly in the West, that launched campaigns against Qatar had interests before but couldn’t find their interest in Qatar, including purchase of shares or saving some huge media entities from bankruptcy. He noted that some of these media outlets mixed their commercial interests with their political ones.
On Qatar’s support for democracy in the Arab world, al-Attiyah said: “We never claimed we are a democratic state in the way you imagine. Every country, and this unfortunately is the case with some Western countries too, think that their democracy is the one that we should implement. Maybe we have an exclusiveness in GCC, maybe we have the best existing democracy that fits us and our societies, and the safety and security that we enjoy is because we didn’t allow anyone to tamper with our model of democracy.”
Asked about different opinions within the GCC states, al-Attiyah said it was a healthy and natural phenomenon and without it there wouldn’t be an applicable decision, stressing that GCC ties were the healthiest in the region.
As for Qatar’s presidency of the current GCC session, he said it didn’t mean making unilateral decisions but it rather meant being part of the decision-making process and taking decisions that take into consideration the interests of all GCC states and their security and economic aspects .
“Decisions in GCC are not taken unilaterally or emotionally.... Qatar is fully playing its role as a president of the current session,” the minister said, adding that GCC was serious about taking all the measures that protected its security and interests of its countries.
