Blockade founded on petty jealousy, says Qatar

The UAE's demand that Qatar give up the World Cup shows "their illegal blockade is founded on petty jealousy, not real concerns", the government communications office said on Tuesday.

"Their weak attempts to tie the hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup to their illegal blockade show their desperation to justify their inhumane action," it added in a statement to Reuters.Qatar's response came after UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash tried to explain the incendiary comment of a top Emirati official, who had earlier tweeted that the Gulf crisis was fabricated to take the 2022 FIFA World Cup away from Qatar."The Gulf crisis could end if Doha forfeited hosting the World Cup," Lt Gen Dhahi Khalfan, Deputy Chairman of Police and Public Security, Dubai, had said. Gargash said the official had been misunderstood in media coverage. Khalfan's comments have come under massive attack for their sheer and overt threat to Qatar hosting the ambitious sport event. Further linking the 2022 World Cup to the illegal and unjust boycott, Gargash said Qatar's hosting of the tournament should depend on it rejecting "extremism and terrorism".Qatar, which denies accusations by the UAE and some other Gulf states that it has links to militants, said in a statement to Reuters that the UAE's charge was desperate and "weak".The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain severed diplomatic, trade and travel ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of sponsoring Islamist groups, a charge Doha denies. Egypt has also joined the boycott.Kuwaiti and US attempts to ease the row have yielded little progress.The World Cup is the centrepiece of a carefully crafted strategy to project Qatar onto the global stage via sport. In the run-up, Qatar is scheduled to host events across different sports aimed at improving infrastructure and expertise.Qatar has repeatedly said that the rift has not affected its preparations to host the tournament and that alternative sources for construction materials had been secured.Soccer's governing body FIFA says it has been in regular contact with Qatar since the row erupted.Below is a translation of the tweet of Gargash and its reply by the chief executive officer of Qatar Media Corporation Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Hamad al-Thani.Gargash: The mistake in the translation of brother Dhahi Khalfan’s tweet regarding Qatar's hosting of the World Cup has attracted the attention of the international press; the hosting does not work out with a record in support of extremism and terrorism. Sheikh Abdulrahman: If that was a mistake in the translation from the beginning, even though you’re calling for what your colleague Khalfan called for, then, is your policy of killing free peoples and your crimes against humanity a mistake too?