DOHA Foreign ministers of the six Persian Gulf Arab states plus Egypt and Syria are to meet in the Qatari capital on November 11-12, the official news agency QNA announced Monday. It said the eight signatories of the 1991 Damascus Declaration would discuss cooperation, the Middle East peace process, Iraq, Iran, the Syria-Turkey crisis, and terrorism. The meeting was originally scheduled for the end of 1997 but postponed several times because of tensions between Cairo and Doha after an Arab-Israeli economic conference held in Qatar. The Damascus Declaration was signed in March 1991, a month after the Persian Gulf war in which the eight Arab states contributed to a U.S.-led multinational coalition that evicted Iraq from Kuwait. The main element of the accord was for security cooperation, but it has yet to be implemented.

Apart from Qatar, the Persian Gulf signatories are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. (AFP)