Saudi Gazette report
BRUSSELS — Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said on Friday that Qatar does not appear as the media is projecting to the world as it is hiding behind a dark side that supports terrorism and terror-funding.
“The boycotting countries want Qatar to stop such practices and violations and return to the GCC table,” the Saudi foreign minister said while addressing the members of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the European Parliament.
Al-Jubeir noted that the nuclear agreement with Iran suffers from shortcomings, and hence the international community must make amendments to the agreement. “The Kingdom supports any agreement that prevents Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities, as well as guaranteeing a steady and solid inspection mechanism and punitive measures in case Tehran does not comply with it. I think this is the position of the Administration of US President Donald Trump also,” he said.
“We think the inspection system on the nuclear agreement is weak and should include undeclared military sites. The inspection is limited to declared sites and this is not enough because most of the sites associated with its nuclear program were not disclosed by Iran; for example, the site near the Qom City,” he added.
Al-Jubeir confirmed that all ports and airports in Yemen are open and that there is ongoing work to increase the capacity of a number of Yemeni ports. He noted that there is untrue information being circulated about some issues, and the Houthi militias are detonating cranes from inside and people blame the coalition for this.
On the Syrian crisis, he said: “We believe in solutions based on Security Council Resolution 2254 and we believe that there should be a political process and a new constitution for Syria. There must also be new elections." The solution in Syria is to stop the fighting and bring stability in the Syrian areas for delivering of humanitarian aid, he pointed out.
With regard to human rights and the judicial system in the Kingdom, Al-Jubeir stressed that all states should respect the judicial sovereignty of the Kingdom. Just as the United States has the death penalty, Saudi Arabia has a judicial system that also includes the death penalty.
In response to a question regarding the judgments issued against a number of individuals in the Kingdom, he pointed out all the sentenced individuals were Saudi nationals who were convicted by courts according to the Saudi law and the authorities were only executing court verdicts.
Meanwhile, Al-Jubeir reaffirmed the Kingdom's keenness to combat extremism and terrorism.
