DUBAI, June 19 (Xinhua) -- A United Arab Emirates (UAE) senior official said on Tuesday that Qatar leadership is responsible for its own isolation.
UAE Minister of State Anwar Gargash said through his twitter account that Qatar's proximity to Iran, the normalization of ties with Israel and its relations to Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah are isolating its people from surroundings.
"The leadership's ambiguous political orientations are responsible" for Qatar's being isolated, reported pan-Arab TV news channel Al Arabiya, citing Gargash's tweets.
Gargash also speculated that the Qatari government in Doha under its ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani was not representing the people of Qatar.
"I do not imagine that Qatari citizens are satisfied with his government's support for Houthi or his country's close ties with Tehran, nor did they previously accept the normalization of the country with Israel or its relations with Hezbollah," he tweeted.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar on June 5, 2017, accusing Qatar of aligning with non-Arab Gulf state Iran and the Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen against pan-Arab interests.
The Arab Quartet also accused Qatar of supporting "extremism and terrorism," charges which the Al Thani government has denied.
Qatar has increased trade relations with Iran and Turkey since then in order to mitigate losses triggered by the boycott.
On Monday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani assured Qatar Iran's support in a telephone call with Qatar's Sheikh Tamim. Rouhani said there is "no limit" for development of ties between Tehran and Doha, official IRNA news agency reported.
In a second tweet on Tuesday, Gargash said he does not think the Qatari government was accurately providing the real communication activities between Sheikh Tamim and the Iranian president.
Tamim's stance towards Iran was his "personal position rather than a national position," tweeted Gargash.
Mediating attempts to solve the diplomatic spat in the last 12 months by Arab and Western states like Kuwait and Germany have not been fruitful.
