A united passport for Gulf citizens
Ministers of the interior in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states recommended in conclusion of a meeting that lasted for two days in Doha yesterday the adoption of a united GCC passport and decided to submit the recommendation to the next GCC summit in Kuwait.
The Gulf states also submit the "security agreement to fighting terrorism for further study by specialized legal sides," according to Qatar's minister of state for internal affairs Sheikh Hamad Bin Nasser Al Thani.
It seemed that Kuwait had certain objections to the agreement as the Saudi minister of the interior Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz said that the ministers approved the security agreement except Kuwait "which has a different view point," giving no other explanation.
The ministers approved the unified law "for the safety and security and air shipment of the GCC states and the system to fight acts of riot on board of planes." They expressed in the final statement their "denunciation of the explosions incidents which were carried out by certain terrorist groups in Riyadh," stressing "they stand with Saudi Arabia in confronting these terrorist acts and support all measures and procedures taken by security sides to deal with them efficiently on the ground that the GCC is an integrated area."
The ministers support in their statement "every international move to fight terrorism and cutting sources of financing it, and dealing with its reasons, and not to undermine innocents, and the need to make a distinction between terrorism and the right of people to legitimate struggle in order to liberate their lands" in an implicit remark to the Palestinian resistance.
The GCC ministers condemned "the hostile attempts made by certain media to link terrorism to Islam, rejecting linking terrorism to any culture or religion." They called not to hold Islam and Muslim responsible "for acts and practices that are very far from the spirit of the Islamic jurisprudence." The Saudi minister stressed that his country will start permitting the use of the identity cards to citizens' movement between it and other Gulf states before the end of the current Hijra year, within few months.
Prince Nayef explained "there is no obstacle preventing the adoption of the ID in movement of citizens except completing technical aspects of the matter." Most of the GCC Gulf states started permitting movement by ID among themselves except for Saudi Arabia.