Gulf Arab leaders have gathered in the Qatari capital for a summit expected to push forward plans for a unified military command and an Interpol-like agency to counter regional foe Iran and armed jihadist groups.
The meeting of the foreign ministers from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) kicked off in Doha yesterday evening.
The annual meeting comes after an eight-month diplomatic spat in the bloc which pitted Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain against Qatar over its alleged support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
The threat from terrorist groups is so overstated. The leaders of the GCC focused so much on the security collaboration that it became an obsession. How is an ordinary Kuwaiti, or Qatari or Bahraini or Saudi benefiting from the GCC?
The Brotherhood, from which toppled Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi hailed, has been labelled a “terrorist organisation” by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The other two GCC members, Kuwait and Oman, tried to stay neutral.
A reconciliation meeting attended by the six foreign ministers three weeks ago in the Saudi capital Riyadh, appears to have eased tensions and paved the way for the one-day summit.
“The fact that the meeting is taking place is in itself a success. For the Gulf leaders to come to Qatar after all that happened is a big event,” Abdul Aziz Aluwaisheg, assistant secretary-general of the GCC, told Al Jazeera.
Aluwaisheg said the summit would focus on boosting security cooperation and adopting a multi-layered strategy in “the fight against terrorism”.
The council is expected to discuss kick-starting the work of a military joint command, which would be based in Riyadh.
The bloc is also planning to invigorate the GCC-POL, a UAE-based law enforcement agency for sharing intelligence and dealing with organised crime.
“The military command will allow the GCC to deal better with outside threats, especially from Iran, while the GCC-POL was formed to share information to combat terrorist organisations,” Anwar Ishqi, a former Lieutenant in the Saudi army and the director of the Middle East Centre for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah, told Al Jazeera.
The falling oil prices are also expected to be extensively discussed at the summit, especially as some of bloc’s oil-exporting members were already talking about the need to reform state spending and diversify away from energy.
