President Donald Trump, accompanied by Romanian President Klaus Werner Iohannis, speaks during a news conference in the Rose Garden at the White House, Friday, June 9, 2017, in Washington.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking to reporters shortly before Trump's remarks, said the Gulf countries' land and air blockade of Doha is hurting the campaign against ISIS, an assessment Pentagon officials only partially corroborated.
The announcement increases pressure on Qatar in a diplomatic and economic campaign to isolate the small Gulf Arab state, which is a critical global supplier of gas and hosts the biggest US military base in the Middle East.
"We have all kinds of recordings taking place where they (Qatar) are coordinating with al Qaeda in Syria", he said. Qatar denies the accusations.
As the regional tension between Qatar and brotherly countries simmer after Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and few other nations cut diplomatic and travel ties, a number of world leaders including ministers and diplomats held conversations with Qatar Foreign Minister and ambassadors placed in various countries. "We have to stop the funding of terrorism". Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said isolating Qatar would not resolve any problems.
"The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has over the years built strong partnerships with these organizations based on shared humanitarian principles, which are strictly non-political", added the United Nations official.
Tillerson said he has spoken with "many" leaders in the region in the last few days, and that those conversation have shown him a solution is possible.
Tillerson, too, faulted Qatar for allowing funds to flow to extremist groups, but in terms that were much less severe than Trump's.
The president said Qatar must end its support for extremism, along with "all other nations". "There are humanitarian consequences to this blockade".
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Unlike Trump, Tillerson stressed the possibility of reconciliation and pointed to the human cost of the Saudi-led blockade, mentioning shortages of food, the way families had been separated and they way some children have been pulled out of school.
He said there had been no change to Qatar's military deployment and no troops had been moved.
But Qatar is an important U.S. ally and hosts USA military forces operating in the Gulf region-including United States and coalition aircraft involved in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, operating from Al Udeid Air Base. And the kingdom's biggest trading partners - Japan, South Korea, China, and India, which buy huge amounts of natural gas from it - are all outside the politically volatile Middle East.
Qatar on Friday dismissed as "baseless" a terrorism blacklist published by Saudi Arabia and its allies which linked individuals and organisations in Doha to support for Islamist militant groups.
He said Russian Federation and Qatar "are bonded with relationship of friendship" and appreciates the countries' bilateral cooperation.
Normally guarded about politics, Qataris have expressed outrage.
"Qatar has made efforts to prosecute significant terrorist financiers".
In 2011, during the Arab Spring, Qatar backed the group and the people protesting against then-President Hosni Mubarak, who was in power for almost three decades. In 2000, Bahrain banned the network's broadcast after it called municipal elections in the country as "serving Zionism".
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