RIYADH

The Ministerial Council of the Gulf Cooperation Council reaffirmed on Thursday the “exclusive right” of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to the disputed Durra gas field on the eastern border of the submerged area in the Persian Gulf.

In a statement following its ministerial meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council affirmed that “the ownership of the natural resources in the submerged area adjacent to the Saudi-Kuwaiti divided zone, including the entire Durra field, belongs to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait only.”

It added: “We reject any claims regarding the rights of any other party to the Durra field.”

On the repeated attacks targeting the Muslim holy book, the Quran, in Sweden and Denmark, the Ministerial Council of the regional bloc stressed “the importance of consolidating the values of dialogue and respect between peoples and cultures.”

It also welcomed that the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia and Iran began their diplomatic missions.

Durra/Arash, a natural gas field in the northern Persian Gulf with an estimated 220 billion cubic meters of gas, continues to be a contention between Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

While Kuwait and Saudi Arabia refer to the offshore natural gas field located in the neutral zone between Iran and Saudi Arabia as Durra, Iran calls it Arash.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi