Rex Tillerson blames Arab quartet for lack of progress on resolving Qatar dispute
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed the Arab quartet for a lack of progress on resolving the diplomatic rift with Qatar, Bloomberg reports. “There seems to be a real unwillingness on the part of some of the parties to want to engage,” Tillerson said in an interview Thursday in Washington, on the eve of his Middle East tour. “It’s up to the leadership of the quartet when they want to engage with Qatar because Qatar has been very clear — they’re ready to engage,” he added. Tillerson arrived in Riyadh on Saturday to attend a meeting between officials from Saudi Arabia and Iraq aimed at improving relations between the two countries, Reuters report.
Separately, US President Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy is in Egypt to help move talks on Palestinian reconciliation forward and “ensure that the Egyptians do not take them in a direction unacceptable to the US and Israel,” David M. Halbfinger writes for the New York Times.