DUBAI, May 28 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) top diplomat appealed on Sunday for "unity" among Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries after Qatar allegedly showed sympathy toward Iran last week.
"The GCC is going through a serious diplomatic crisis," Anwar Gargash, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said on his twitter account, urging "changing behavior and building confidence" to ensure "solving the crisis" between Qatar and the other five GCC members on the issue of Iran.
However, "our patient has limits," the minister added.
On May 23, Qatar News Agency (QNA) said the publication of a statement by Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani who called Iran an "Islamic power" was "fake" as its website was "hacked." However, state media in the UAE and Saudi Arabia said the explanation of an alleged hacking attack on QNA was "not credible."
The war of words triggered the UAE and Saudi Arabia to block several Qatari news outlets from being aired in their countries, including the renowned news channel Al Jazeera, owned by Qatar's ruling family.
Relations between Qatar and the other Gulf Arab states suffered an eight-month breach in 2014 over the kingdom's support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
The diplomatic rift came just days after the Riyadh summit, where U.S. President Donald Trump called on the Sunni Arab nations to isolate Iran and ensured his Arab allies that Iran would "never have a nuclear bomb."
The UAE and Saudi Arabia accuse Iran of funding and arming Shiite Houthi rebels in war-torn Yemen, where a Saudi-led pan-Arab military coalition has been fighting the Houthis in favor of the legitimate government of Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi since March 2015.
