Qatar's response to demands to be given to Kuwait today

*Emir Sends Written Message through FM to Emir of Kuwait *Arab foreign ministers to discuss crisis in Cairo on Wednesday

Qatar's foreign minister will formally hand over a response to the demands made by Saudi Arabia and its allies to the Kuwaiti Emir today. According to the official Qatar News Agency, the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah will meet today morning HE the Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.Sheikh Mohamed will give a written message from His Highness the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to the Kuwaiti leader. "The message is about the reply which was prepared earlier by the State of Qatar on the list of collective demands submitted by the State of Kuwait at the end of last month," QNA added.The deadline imposed by the Arab states for Qatar to comply with a 13-point demand list was yesterday night.Kuwait has been leading mediation efforts to defuse the Gulf crisis that erupted on June 5 when a Saudi-led bloc of countries cut diplomatic and travel ties with Qatar and imposed a blockade against it.Speaking to reporters in Rome on Saturday, Sheikh Mohamed had said the demands were made to be rejected, adding that the Arab ultimatum was aimed not at tackling terrorism but at curtailing Qatar's sovereignty.But he said Doha remained ready to sit down and discuss the grievances raised by its Arab neighbours."This list of demands is made to be rejected. It's not meant to be accepted or ... to be negotiated," Sheikh Mohamed said."The state of Qatar instead of rejecting it as a principle, we are willing to engage in (dialogue), providing the proper conditions for further dialogue."He added that no one had the right to issue an ultimatum to a sovereign country.The rift erupted last month when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic and travel ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism and being an ally of Iran, charges that Doha denies.The list of 13 demands include closing a Turkish military base in Qatar and shutting the Al Jazeera pan-Arab television network. The TV network has rejected the accusations and said it will maintain its editorial independence.A State Department official said yesterday that the United States encourages "all parties to exercise restraint to allow for productive diplomatic discussions. We are not going to get ahead of those discussions. We fully support Kuwaiti mediation."A Qatari artist whose portrait of His Highness the Emir has been draped from skyscrapers and affixed to car windows across the country signed T-shirts for Qataris at a museum on Saturday in a sign of loyalty to the Emir and love for the country.The crisis has not hit energy exports from Qatar, the world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas and home to the region's biggest US military base.The rift opened days after US President Donald Trump met Arab leaders in Riyadh and called for unity against regional threats such as Iran and hardline Islamist militant groups.Reuters adds: Foreign ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain will meet in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the Gulf crisis."At the invitation of Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, there will be a quartet meeting of the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in Cairo on July 5 to follow up on the developing situation regarding relations with Qatar," Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said in a statement.