Advertisement
UAE leader makes surprise visit to Qatar after years-long four-nation boycott of Doha
- Abu Dhabi leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan made the trip at the invitation of Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
- Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began to boycott Qatar in 2017 over Qatar’s support of Islamists in power following the 2011 Arab spring
Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
The leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) made a surprise visit on Monday to Qatar as it is hosting the World Cup – his first since leading a years-long four-nation boycott of Doha over a political dispute that poisoned regional relations.
Advertisement
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who also serves as the ruler of Abu Dhabi, made the trip at the invitation of Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the state-run WAM news agency reported.
“The visit builds on the existing brotherly relations between the two nations and their people,” WAM said in its brief report.
Sheikh Mohammed was widely viewed by analysts as one of the main architects of the boycott of Qatar by Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE that began in 2017.
At the height of the Qatar crisis, newspaper columns even suggested digging a trench along the 87km border with Saudi Arabia and filling it with nuclear waste. While rhetorical bluster, it showed how deeply the anger ran in the region amid the dispute – which Kuwait’s then-ruler suggested nearly sparked a war.
Advertisement
Advertisement