Bahrain threatens to pull out of Gulf summit, calls for Qatar’s expulsion from GCC

Bahrain, which was the first country to put up the illegal blockade against Qatar in June 5, has now said that it will not attend the next Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting in Kuwait in December if Qatar attends it.

In a series of tweets, Bahrain’s foreign minister Khalid Al Khalifa also called for Qatar’s expulsion from the GCC bloc, reported Al Jazeera.

On Sunday night, Khalid Al Khalifa tweeted that Qatar’s membership of the bloc should be frozen until it submits to demands made by the blockading countries — Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE.

“Bahrain will not attend the GCC summit and sit with Qatar. The right step needed to maintain the GCC is to freeze Qatar’s membership until it comes to its senses and complies with our list of demands,” Khalifa said.

“Given what comes from Qatar, from its rogue policy and pervasive evil nature that threatens our national security, our countries have taken the important step of boycotting Qatar and imposing a siege on it,” he said in another tweet.

The latest tweet storm is seen as escalating an already delicate situation, which Kuwait and the USA are trying to resolve amicably.

Sheikh Khalid is the first senior official from the Saudi-led bloc to float the idea of suspending Qatar’s membership in the GCC, reported Bloomberg.

However, it is not clear whether the three countries have enough support to do so as Kuwait and Oman are widely seen as unlikely to follow suit.

According to the GCC charter, resolutions on ‘substantive matters’ require the unanimous approval of attending members.

Khalifa's tweets are the first admission by a member of the quartet that they are besieging Qatar after previously claiming there was merely a boycott of the country and that Doha had no grounds to complain.

The comments were made shortly after an interview by Qatar’s Emir HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani was broadcast by American network station CBS.