(Reuters) – Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told Bloomberg TV https://bloom.bg/369WLz9 that Qatar has urged Gulf Arab nations to enter a dialogue with Iran and that it was the right time for Doha to broker negotiations.
“This is also a desire that’s shared by other GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries,” he said in an interview.
Separately, the Qatari government was supporting discussions between Iran and South Korea to secure the release of an oil tanker seized by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards early this month, the foreign minister said.
As far as any potential U.S.-Iran talks, he said that Qatar will facilitate the discussions if asked and will support whoever is chosen to do so.
“We want the accomplishment, we want to see the deal happening”, he said of potential talks between Washington and Tehran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif welcomed Qatar’s call for regional dialogue.
“As we have consistently emphasized, the solution to our challenges lies in collaboration to jointly form a ‘strong region’: peaceful, stable, prosperous & free from global or regional hegemony,” Zarif said on Twitter.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Dubai newsroom; Editing by Michael Perry and Grant McCool)
