Middle East...:Qatar Hosted Taliban on US Request: Senior Of...

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Qatar Hosted Taliban on US Request: Senior Official

Local Editor

A senior Qatari official uncovered that Qatar hosted the Taliban militant group based on a request from the United States.

However, the US president, along with a number of Arab regimes, has been pressuring Doha over accusations of supporting extremist groups.

In this respect, senior counterterrorism adviser to Qatar's foreign minister, Mutlaq al-Qahtani, told media sources on Sunday that Qatar hosted the Taliban "by request by the US government" and as part of Qatar's "open-door policy, to facilitate talks, to mediate and to bring peace."

The Taliban opened a so-called political office in Qatar in 2013, but the Qatari government later shut it down. Meanwhile, Taliban leaders are still believed to be in Doha.

Qahtani further noted that Qatar "was facilitating the talks between the Americans, the Taliban, and the government of Afghanistan."

The US has a military base in Qatar, which it says is crucial to its operations in the Middle East.

The diplomatic war on Qatar has been spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, which is itself known as the main sponsor of violent Wahhabi terrorists. Some analysts believe the Saudi anger at Qatar is rather because Doha acts more independently of Riyadh in its foreign policy.

Separately, Qahtani told AFP that the diplomatic pressures and other restrictions on Qatar were in fact really meant to make Doha fall into line behind Saudi Arabia in Riyadh's regional ambitions.

"I think this is not about counterterrorism, it's not about terror financing," he said. "I think it is about an orchestrated campaign against my country to pressure my country to change its active, independent foreign policy."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team