DOHA (BLOOMBERG) - Qatar has urged Gulf Arab nations to enter a dialogue with Iran, saying the time was right for Doha to broker negotiations now the neighbours have begun to patch up their own differences. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who has long called for a summit between leaders of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and the Islamic Republic, said his government was "hopeful that this would happen and we still believe this should happen". "This is also a desire that's shared by other GCC countries," he told Bloomberg TV in an interview. The comments come days before Mr Joe Biden moves into the White House with a promise to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers and roll back the "maximum pressure" campaign that won the support of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Mr Biden has already named a series of diplomats who helped forge the original agreement to top policy posts. Qatar recently mended a rift with Gulf Arab neighbours that had festered for more than three years and centered on accusations that it was bankrolling militant groups and undermining attempts to isolate
Days after its heaviest snowfall in 50 years, Madrid woke on Tuesday to its lowest temperatures in decades, with the mercury plummeting to minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit).
JERUSALEM: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure in his fourth re-election battle in two years, is trying to court voters he has previously demonised: Arab Israelis."A new era begins today," the veteran right-wing premier said during a rare visit this month to Nazareth, Israel's largest Arab city.Netanyahu, threatened by a damaging split in his Likud party, has made several stops in a game-changing charm offensive toward Arab voters that some observers have found jarring.He highlighted Israel's rapid novel coronavirus inoculation pace at a vaccination centre in Umm al-Fahm on January 1, while in Nazareth he promised investment and anti-crime initiatives and apologised for potentially offensive past remarks.Arab Israelis -- Palestinians who stayed on their land following the Jewish state's creation in 1948, and their descendants -- make up about 20 percent of the country's roughly nine million people.The community's growing political importance was evident in the last vote, in March 2020, when the mainly Arab Joint List alliance won an unprecedented 15 seats in the 120-member Knesset, forming a key part of the anti-Netanyahu bloc.Netanyahu, a hardliner on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, has on several occasions in recent years condemned Arab Israelis and their political leaders as terrorism supporters and
