Middle East News: Kuwait Leads Effort to Resolve Gulf Split - Bloomberg:
Kuwait is guiding a new effort to broker an agreement between feuding Gulf states, according to a person familiar with the matter.
This round of negotiations is based on a months-old U.S. proposal for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to open their airspace to Qatar, the person said, asking not to be identified because the talks aren’t public. Mediators are trying to convince the Saudis and Qataris to accept the proposal, with no real reaction or progress from either side, and there have been no direct talks between the two sides since those broke down last year, the person said.
The rift has affected trade, transport, security and health cooperation between the Gulf countries, and even split families. Washington, which sees cooperation among the energy-rich Gulf Arab states as crucial to efforts to push back against Iranian influence, has lobbied unsuccessfully for a unified front among them.
“Efforts are ongoing and the hopes are higher than they were before,” Kuwait’s prime minister, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah, told top editors of local newspapers on Wednesday. “We used to take one step forward, another one follows.” President Donald Trump has personally pressed Saudi Arabia to end the airspace restrictions amid a fresh U.S. attempt to resolve the feud, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
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