Qatar says position on relations with Syrian regime ‘unchanged’

DOHA, Qatar

Qatar said that its position on normalizing relations with the Syrian regime remains “unchanged.”

On Sunday, the Cairo-based Arab League decided to reinstate Syria’s membership after 12 years of suspension.

“The official position of the State of Qatar on normalization with the Syrian regime is a decision linked primarily to progress in the political solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Syrian people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed bin Mohammad al-Ansari said in statements carried by state news agency QNA.

“Qatar always seeks to support achieving Arab consensus and will not be an obstacle to that,” he added.

Qatar has been a vocal critic of the Bashar al-Assad regime since the outbreak of the country’s civil war in 2011.

Last month, Qatar's Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that his country’s boycott of the Syrian regime remains in place.

Qatar aspires to “work with the Arab brothers to achieve the aspirations of the Syrian people for dignity, peace, development and prosperity,” al-Ansari said.

Qatar is hopeful of “this consensus to be a motive for the Syrian regime to address the roots of the crisis that led to its boycott and take positive steps towards addressing the issues of the Syrian people,” he added.

The decision to reinstate Syria's membership in the Arab League comes ahead of the annual Arab summit in Saudi Arabia on May 19.

Syria was suspended from the 22-state body in 2011 over the regime’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests, which led to a civil war.

The Syrian regime, however, began to exchange official visits and contacts with several Arab countries in recent months.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi in Ankara