By Ibrahim Khazen
DOHA (AA) – Qatar said Wednesday that it will not allow any attacks from the Al-Udeid Air Base, which hosts the largest US military facility in the Middle East, against any other country.
"The State of Qatar does not accept that attacks or wars be launched from Al-Udeid base against countries in the region or beyond,” Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman said in an interview with the state-run Qatar TV.
Qatar hosts about 13,000 US troops at Al-Udeid base, according to previous information reported by the Qatari channel Al Jazeera.
“The relationship with the United States is a strategic partnership characterized by cooperation on multiple levels while emphasizing that each party enjoys full sovereignty, and neither interferes in the affairs of the other,” bin Abdulrahman said.
Iran is on high alert in anticipation of an Israeli military response to the Oct. 1 missile attack by Tehran, which said the attack was in retaliation for the recent assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander.
Regarding efforts to reach a cease-fire deal in the Gaza Strip, the Qatari premier said, “For more than a year, we have been mediating in the Gaza file, but unfortunately, the agreement requires two parties."
Bin Abdulrahman said Qatar has made extensive contacts with the Lebanese side to help halt the war in Lebanon.
"Lebanon's major crisis is the war that resulted in the displacement of 1.2 million Lebanese, not the presidency,” he said, in reference to the vacancy of the position of president in Lebanon.
Israel has mounted a huge air campaign in Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, killing more than 1,500 people and displacing more than 1.34 million.
The aerial campaign is an escalation from a year of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of its offensive on the Gaza Strip, in which Israel has killed more than 42,400 people, most of them women and children, since a Hamas attack last year.
Israel expanded the conflict on Oct. 1 by launching an incursion into southern Lebanon.
*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala