Israel will take part in a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting to be held in Doha in November, a senior Qatari official said Friday.
Qatar has frozen ties with the Jewish state, whose trade office in Doha was closed down last November on the eve of an Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) summit there amid criticism from other Arab and Islamic countries.
"All WTO member states, including Israel, will take part in the Doha conference," said Sheikh Hamad bin Faisal Al Thani, head of the Qatari committee helping to organize the conference, cited by the Gulf Times.
Addressing a press conference, Thani said the “Doha conference was concerned with economic matters and had nothing to do with politics.”
“If Doha did anything to prevent Israeli attendance at the meeting, not only Qatar but other Arab countries too would be forbidden from organizing such world conferences in future,” Sheikh Faisal said.
Besides, this is not the first such conference to be held in an Arab country with Israeli participation, he added.
As a host, Qatar is concerned with providing meeting facilities and arranging the delegates’ accommodations, transport and other facilities.
He said this was like any other international conference where the nationality of the delegates did not matter.
All delegates would be allowed entry even if their country did not have diplomatic relations with Qatar, he said.
He cited the example of Fidel Castro getting a visa to attend a UN General Assembly meeting in New York even though Cuba and the US are sworn enemies.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Faisal said Egypt had a great role to play at the conference because “Cairo represents the developing Arab countries and it ensures their voice is heard at such conferences.”
Human rights groups have argued that the conservative Gulf state would have no qualms about cracking down on protesters during the conference.
Many anti-globalization demonstrators rampaged through the streets of the US city of Seattle during the last WTO ministerial conference in November 1999, seriously disrupting the meeting – Albawaba.com
