Kuwait Guides New Effort to Resolve Split Among Gulf Nations

(Bloomberg) --

Kuwait is guiding a new effort to broker an agreement between feuding Gulf states, according to a person familiar with the matter.

This round of negotiations is based on a months-old U.S. proposal for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to open their airspace to Qatar, the person said, asking not to be identified because the talks aren't public. Mediators are trying to convince the Saudis and Qataris to accept the proposal, with no real reaction or progress from either side, and there have been no direct talks between the two sides since those broke down last year, the person said.

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The rift has affected trade, transport, security and health cooperation between the Gulf countries, and even split families. Washington, which sees cooperation among the energy-rich Gulf Arab states as crucial to efforts to push back against Iranian influence, has lobbied unsuccessfully for a unified front among them.

“Efforts are ongoing and the hopes are higher than they were before,” Kuwait's prime minister, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah, told top editors of local newspapers on Wednesday. “We used to take one step forward and two steps back, but now if we take a step forward, another one follows.” President Donald Trump has personally pressed Saudi Arabia to end the airspace restrictions amid a fresh U.S. attempt to resolve the feud, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

But another Gulf official with knowledge of the undertaking, who asked not to be identified citing the sensitivity of the matter, indicated that little has changed and said the Gulf may have become more divided rather than less. Kuwait and Oman have not backed the Saudi-led boycott of Qatar and its rulers, who helped form the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981.

Three GCC countries cut travel, trade and diplomatic ties with Qatar in mid-2017, accusing it of stirring regional tensions, supporting Islamist extremism and enabling Iran. They've since also privately expressed unease at Qatar's close relations with Turkey, whose leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is viewed with suspicion by the Gulf monarchies for his popular Islamic politics. Doha has denied the charges leveled at it by Saudi, the U.A.E. and Bahrain.