(MENAFN- Arab Times) The Gulf Cooperation Council on Sunday rejected claims a US-led coalition air campaign against the Islamic State group has failed following advances by jihadists in Syria and Iraq. Speaking in Doha, after a meeting between foreign ministers of the GCC and European Union, Khalid al-Attiyah, Qatar's foreign minister, conceded that military action alone was not enough. "The coalition is not failing but the air campaign is not enough," Attiyah, who was representing GCC countries at the meeting, told reporters. "There are so many steps which we have to cooperate and coordinate together. To date the campaign against terror is effective. "One of them is to enhance and expedite the dialogue in Iraq, and in Syria it is to find a way out to save the Syrian people, because they have been put between the tyranny of the regime and the brutality of the terrorist," he said. The jihadist IS group took full control of a border crossing between Syria and Iraq on Sunday, a week after capturing the Iraqi city of Ramadi and days after seizing the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. The surge by a group described as the most violent in modern jihad raised further questions about the efficiency of the US-led coalition's eight-month air campaign.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, described the latest news from Syria and Iraq, "especially" the capture of Palmyra, as "dramatic". "Only a political solution, both in Syria and Iraq, can provide a settlement for the crisis," she said. The day-long meeting touched on several significant areas of interest between the two sides, including the conflict in Yemen ahead of UN-brokered peace talks expected to take place next week in Geneva. Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi has laid out conditions for attending Thursday's talks, namely that Iran-back Houthi rebels who overran much of the country withdraw from territory they have seized. Saudi Arabia has been leading an air campaign against the Houthis since March 26 in a bid to restore the authority of Hadi who has fled to Riyadh with his government.
Talks in Doha also touched upon economics, with both sides saying they would continue to have discussions on establishing a free trade area between the 28-member EU and the six-state GCC. Mogherini said trade between the EU and GCC had been growing at an "incredible rate" and reached "150 billion ($165 billion) euros last year". The minister also addressed global issues of common interest, in particular the fight against terrorism, and strongly condemned the heinous attack against worshippers in Qatif, Saudi Arabia on May 22.
They underlined the strategic importance for the EU and the GCC to coordinate closely on these developments. The GCC and EU ministers reviewed progress in the GCC-EU relationship and endorsed the minutes of the latest Joint Cooperation Committee meetings in Brussels on 4th May 2015. The ministers expressed determination to address together common political, social, economic, and security challenges. They lauded the remarkable growth in the trade exchange which hit 148 billion euro in 2014, compared with only 100 billion euro in 2010.
The ministers welcomed cooperation initiatives undertaken since the last ministerial, notably through the GCC-EU dialogues on the economy, air transport, the energy experts group, exchanges on railway transport, trade with a focus on sanitary, phytosanitary and standardization issues, as well as cooperation on economic diversification in the context of the upcoming 21st UNFCCC Conference of Parties to be held in Paris in December 2015. They looked forward to expanding GCC-EU relations through increased people to people contacts, and further cooperation in the social, economic, educational, cultural and scientific fields, and human rights. The GCC and EU ministers agreed to hold their next meeting in the EU in 2016. The GCC groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
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