Qatar says air strikes hopeless without Iraqi national dialogue

Qatar’s Foreign Minister Khaled al-Attiyah said on Wednesday coalition air strikes in Iraq were hopeless without a real push for national reconciliation and said that the door should be left open to Syrians who left al-Qaeda’s wing in the country.

“We see no hope to continue an air campaign without simultaneously having a national dialogue on the ground,” Attiyah told Reuters in an interview in Paris.

Attiyah, whose country has previously been accused of supporting militant groups in the fight against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said Qatar was not supporting al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch Jubhat al-Nusra.

“Qatar does not deal with Daesch (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) or Jabhat al-Nusra, but you always have to keep the door open for the Syrians who are with Jabhat al Nusra if they decide to depart from Qaeda and go back to their own people as Syrians,” he said.