Foreign ministers and finance ministers of six oil-rich Gulf Arab states met in the Qatari capital of Doha on Sunday to work out the agenda of an upcoming summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) due on Monday.
The joint ministerial meeting started Saturday afternoon behind closed doors in the Sheraton Doha hotel and is currently underway.
GCC Secretary General Abdul Rahman Bin Hamad al-Attiyah has said that regional security and economic cooperation would be top on the agenda of the two-day summit of the GCC, which groups Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman and Bahrain.
In an interview with Arrayah newspaper on Saturday, al-Attiyah said that the upcoming summit was extraordinarily important considering the political and economic circumstances in the region.
Al-Attiyah said Doha summit would approve a feasibility study on the power grid and water network project among GCC states and approve the official declaration of the Gulf common market in early 2008.
The summit is also expected to forge a common opinion on security challenges related to Iranian nuclear program and the deteriorating situation in Iraq, al-Attiyah said, noting that the GCC states are against the use of force as means of settling Iran's nuclear program.
A well-informed source said GCC countries were very concerned about Iran's controversial nuclear issue, fearing the rising tensions between the Shiite-dominated Islamic Republic and western countries over the issue might lead to regional instability.
Besides leaders of the six Gulf Arab countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also expected to attend the summit, the first time that an Iranian president is invited to the GCC annual summit.
Founded in 1981, the GCC is a regional political and economic alliance aimed at unifying Gulf Arab states in the face of internal and international challenges.
Source: Xinhua
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