U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson meets in Washington Tuesday with Qatari's foreign minister, three weeks after Saudi Arabia and other Arab states imposed trade and diplomatic embargoes on the oil-rich American ally.
Tillerson's State Department meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani comes days after Qatar rejected demands that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates had made in return for lifting their sanctions against the small monarchy on the Arabian Peninsula.
The four Arab countries said they would not normalize relations until Qatar complied with 13 demands, among them cooling its relations with Iran and closing the Qatari-state-funded Al Jazeera news network.
The Saudi-led group suspended all relations after accusing Qatar of supporting extremist groups and destabilizing the region. Qatar has denied all such claims.
Tillerson has called for dialogue among the Gulf states as the best way to try to reach a diplomatic solution to their dispute.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert recently questioned whether Qatar's alleged support for terrorist groups is the real reason for the embargoes.
In addition to severing diplomatic relations, the four countries have closed their airspace to Qatari airlines and blocked its only land border, a vital route for food imports.
Tillerson is tasked with balancing U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, in particular. The Trump administration is hoping to close business and investment deals with the Saudis worth more than $350 billion, while the biggest U.S. military base in the region, Al Udeid Air Base, is in Qatar.
Read More Tillerson Meets Qatari FM on Persian Gulf Crisis : http://ift.tt/2thQwqh
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