DOHA // Qatar recalled its ambassador to Egypt on Thursday “for consultation” following a row over Cairo’s air strikes on ISIL targets in Libya.
It comes the day after Libya’s foreign minister urged the UN Security Council to lift an arms embargo to allow the country’s military to fight extremists.
A Qatari foreign ministry official said Doha was recalling its envoy after Egypt’s delegate to the Arab League, Tariq Adel, accused Qatar of supporting “terrorism”.
Mr Adel made his claim after Doha expressed reservations over welcoming the air strikes on Libya, stressing the need for “consultations before any unilateral military action against another member state”.
The Gulf Cooperation Council threw its support behind Qatar on Thursday, saying it rejected Mr Adel’s accusations.
The claims are “unfounded, contradict reality, and ignore the sincere efforts by Qatar as well as the Gulf Cooperation Council and Arab states in combating terrorism and extremism at all levels,” said the GCC’s secretary general Abdullatif Al Zayani.
Qatar is a member of the US-led coalition that is waging air strikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria, while Egypt is a close ally of the United States.
A new rift would complicate efforts to forge a united front against ISIL in Libya, where the extremist group is trying to establish another stronghold.
Egyptian F-16s bombed militant bases in the eastern Libyan city of Derna on Tuesday, after ISIL in Libya released a gruesome video showing the beheadings of a group of Egyptian Coptic Christians who had gone to the country seeking work.
Qatar’s foreign ministry denounced on Thursday the “tense” statement by Egypt’s representative to the Arab League, saying it “confuses the need to combat terrorism (with) ... the brutal killing and burning of civilians.”
However, Saad bin Ali Al Mohannadi, director of Arab affairs in the ministry, said that Qatar “is supportive and will always remain supportive of the will and stability of the Egyptian people”.
Ties between Qatar and Egypt have been strained in recent years amid a row over Qatar’s backing for ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi.
Relations reached a low point when Mr Morsi — who hails from the now banned Muslim Brotherhood — was toppled by the army in July 2013.
Qatar has repeatedly denounced Mr Morsi’s removal and still provides shelter for many Brotherhood leaders.
However, in December, there was an apparent thaw in relations after Qatar gave its full support to president Abdel Fattah El Sisi, the army chief who overthrew Mr Morsi and was then elected to office.
Qatar’s Mr Mohannadi also made clear that Doha does not want a Libyan arms embargo lifted on “the principle of not strengthening one conflict party against another before the end of the dialogue and the formation of a national unity government”.
Libya’s foreign minister Mohammed Al Dairi appealed to the UN Security Council on Wednesday to lift the embargo, which was imposed in 2011 after the uprising that ousted longtime Muammar Qaddafi.
“Libya needs a decisive stance from the international community to help us build our national army’s capacity and this would come through a lifting of the embargo on weapons, so that our army can receive material and weapons, so as to deal with this rampant terrorism,” Mr Al Dairi said.
The foreign minister stressed he was not seeking an international military intervention, but that there was no time to lose to equip the Libyan army to confront the emboldened extremists.
There is increasing concern that some militias inside Libya have pledged allegiance to ISIL following the Egyptian beheadings.
Egypt has pushed for a UN resolution easing restrictions on weapons sales to Libya but Western diplomats have expressed reservations.
British foreign secretary Philip Hammond rejected international military action in Libya on Thursday, saying that the crisis-hit country needed a political solution.
“We don’t believe that military action can solve the problem in Libya,” Mr Hammond said at a joint press conference in Algiers with his Algerian counterpart Ramtane Lamamra.
“The Algerian position and the British position are identical ... we believe in an inclusive political solution in Libya.”
Meanwhile, US president Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the battle against groups like ISIL was as much about winning hearts and minds as waging a military campaign.
Speaking at a White House summit on radicalism, Mr Obama said the “ideologies, the infrastructure of extremists, the propagandists, the recruiters, the funders”, must all be tackled.
* Agence France-Presse