00:00Qatar says the future of the Strait of Hormuz should be decided by the entire Gulf region.
00:06The Qatari Foreign Ministry says a collective decision is needed over the strait,
00:10which goes through many territorial waters once security has been re-established.
00:16Hosam Zaki is the Assistant Secretary General of the League of Arab States
00:21and Egypt's former ambassador to Brazil.
00:24I think it is achievable. I think this is a wise opinion coming from Qatar.
00:30I think that has been the case prior to this war.
00:35The complications that happened after the start of the war are related to the war.
00:43We certainly hope that those complications are not going to be turned into permanent arrangements.
00:50I hope they're going to be just that, tied to the war.
00:55And then after the war ends, there will be a comeback to the original arrangements,
01:01even if the original arrangements should include all those countries that are looking over the Gulf.
01:12In the Gulf War of 1990, Arab countries paid huge costs for the war.
01:19The White House Press Secretary was asked this morning about Gulf countries paying towards this war.
01:26Will they and should they?
01:31You know, at the end, paying amounts of money for any military effort is a sovereign decision by any one
01:44country.
01:44But what I can tell you is that none of our member states, and certainly not those Gulf countries,
01:53have asked for this war, wanted this war, wanted this war to last.
01:58So I am wondering, and I'm sure a lot of our other member states would be wondering as well,
02:06why would anyone want Arab countries to foot the bill for a war that they did not ask for?
02:14Mr. Trump has angrily hit out in the last few hours against his allies,
02:20suggesting that some are not doing enough, whatever that means.
02:25I wonder, are Arab nations doing enough in his view?
02:31I don't know. You have to ask him about that.
02:34But I can tell you, looking at the situation from our own perspective,
02:41I think we've done more than enough.
02:44Our member states have been suffering.
02:46Just today, the UN has issued a report estimating the losses of the month of military activities in the Gulf
02:58and on Iran
03:02to being around $260 billion for the Arab countries.
03:08This is a huge amount of money, a huge amount of money.
03:11So if it wasn't just, if it was only that, I think that is more than enough for countries,
03:20again, that have never asked for this war, that never wanted it to continue,
03:26and want to see the end of it sooner rather than later.
03:30Let me ask you about Lebanon.
03:34What should we make of Israel's incursions into Lebanon?
03:38And what should the international response be?
03:42What should the Arab nation's response be?
03:46Listen, we've been gathering a political momentum here in the Arab world in solidarity with Lebanon.
03:55The Lebanese government has taken all the necessary, the right procedures,
04:00the necessary decisions that would enable it to become the sole bearer of arms and weapons on its territory.
04:11This is a very difficult undertaking, especially in view of the fact that Hezbollah has been building up its arsenal
04:20for about 40 years.
04:22This is something that is very difficult to achieve.
04:25Yet, our member states are all in solidarity with Lebanon for that matter.
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