Mahmoud Barakat
04 December 2017•Update: 04 December 2017
By Mohamed Abdul-Ghaffar and Ahmed al-Masri
KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait
Foreign Ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries held a meeting in Kuwait on Monday ahead of the Gulf summit, due to open on Tuesday.
The meeting comes amid a Gulf crisis triggered by the cutoff of ties in June between four Arab states and Qatar, who accuse Doha of supporting terrorism.
Addressing the meeting, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah underlined the importance of promoting relations between GCC states.
He called the Gulf bloc a "solid fortress" for the security of GCC countries.
Monday's meeting was attended by Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.
On Sunday, the top Qatari diplomat said Qatari’s emir Sheikh Tamim would attend the two-day GCC summit in Kuwait.
In June, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism.
The four threatened to impose further sanctions on Doha if it failed to accept a long list of demands, including the closure of the Qatar-funded Al Jazeera television.
Qatar denies the accusations, describing attempts to diplomatically isolate it as a violation of international law and its national sovereignty.
Kuwait has been leading mediation efforts to resolve the crisis, dispatching a number of high-level emissaries to relay messages between Qatar and the blockade states.
