Egypt dismissed the Qatari accusations of using its membership in the UN Security Council to achieve its own political purposes, saying these allegations includes a lot of lies and fallacies, Egypt’s permanent envoy to the United Nations Amr Abu Al-Atta said.
In a complaint to the president of the Security Council, Abu Al-Atta added that “the Qatari allegations are not worth the response. It is normal that Doha, which supports terrorism and intervenes in the internal affairs of other countries, as a policy, and it is normal that it cannot understand the commitment of all states in the United Nations, including Egypt, to confront terrorism in accordance with the international agreements and the Security Council’s resolutions that oblige all countries to counter all forms of terrorism.”
Two weeks ago, the Qatari mission to the United Nations sent a petition to the Security Council expressing its deep concern towards what it described as “Egypt’s use of its membership in the Security Council to achieve private political purposes that are not related to the council’s work.”
The Qatari petition said that the Egyptian allegations come in the text of a “tendentious campaign targeting the state of Qatar and are not base in facts, but media reports or statements of militias supported by Egypt.”
Egypt’s mission said in the complaint that “Egypt has to uncover Qatar’s practices and activities, which provide financial and ideological support for terror groups. These activities do not include the Middle East only, but other places all over the world.”
Abu Al-Atta added that Egypt is working on implementing the UN resolutions and demands the necessity for the Security Council to punish countries that do not implement these resolutions. He also pointed out Egypt’s request to the Security Council to investigate the accusations against the Qatari regime of supporting terrorism.
“Supporting terrorists with finances, arms, or hosting them and promoting terrorism is a crime, as well as the terror attack itself, and requires accountability,” Abu Al-Atta said.
“Every country’s record is known in confronting or supporting terrorism, and all countries know the known record of the state of Qatar in supporting terrorism in Syria, Iraq, and Libya,” Abu Al-Atta said. He also added that Egypt and its partners in the region have taken maneuvers and collective measures against Qatar in accordance with the international law, in light of its role in the continuing suffering of Egyptians and others from Qatar’s support for terrorism and providing terrorists with arms and finances.
Resolutions in the council are being decided by collective voting, and no one single country can affect the decisions. Egypt has only one voice, professor of Political Science at Cairo University Hassan Nafea explained.
Meanwhile, Egypt presented an initiative to the Security Council banning terrorists from acquiring arms, and it aims to implement Resolution 2253, issued in 2015, which targets banning terrorists from acquiring arms, according to the Foreign Ministry’s statement.
International relations expert Ayman Samir told Daily News Egypt that when the Egyptian mission said in the complaint that Qatar supports terrorism outside the Middle East, it may mean the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines. He added that Egypt’s initiative for banning terrorists from acquiring arms was applied to Turkey and Qatar.
Samir believes that the four Arab countries boycotting Qatar are in one line, and not only Egypt. He wonders that the Qatari armed forces are about 12,000 soldiers; however, it has bought arms worth about $312 billion during the last 15 years, saying that most of these arms have gone to terrorists.
Since the beginning of June, the three Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain, in addition to Egypt, have been in a dispute with Qatar, accusing it of supporting, funding, and inciting terrorism in Arab countries. Qatar has denied all their accusations.
