Respect law, FM tells Qatari officials

Manama : Foreign Affairs Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa yesterday said that Qatari officials should rule out the idea of controlling the Arabian Gulf.

This came as Shaikh Khalid  responded on his Twitter account to the latest hostile act of the Qatari air forces, which infringed the Bahraini airspace by flying close to two civilian Emirati airplanes that were passing through the Kingdom’s skies on Monday.

The minister said, “Qatari officials must wake up from their dreams and respect international law and not to imagine that the waters of the Arabian Gulf are under their sovereignty”.

Foreign  Affairs Ministry officially condemned the act on Tuesday, describing it as “reckless” and said that “the repetition of such provocative acts reflects a clear determination by the State of Qatar to disregard the safety of civilian aircraft and air navigation, and a violation of relevant international conventions and laws”.

As a response to the incident, the Emirati and Bahraini civil aviation authorities filed official complaints to the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

On January 16, the Civil Aviation Affairs here released radar tracks showing Qatari fighter jets’ interception of two Bahrain-bound Emirati flights and flying in their path within less than a 5km range, endangering the safety of the flight. Several other incidents were also reported by the Emirati authorities in the past four months.