The UAE supports a regional solution to the dispute between the four Arab states, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, and Qatar, but has called for international monitoring of any potential solution to the standoff.

“We need a regional solution and international monitoring,” Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said during a public address in London on 17 July. “We need to be certain that Qatar, a state with $300 billion in reserves, is no longer an official or unofficial sponsor of jihadist and terrorist causes.”

Gargash said that international monitoring was being considered by the bloc of four Arab states that cut all diplomatic ties with Qatar in June.

The UAE minister also rejected claims in a US press report that the UAE had orchestrated the hack of Qatar’s state news agency.

“The Washington Post story today that we actually hacked the Qataris is also not true,” he said.

In addition to cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar, the four Arab countries involved in the dispute have closed land borders and imposed restrictions on travel to and from Qatar.

Gargash said that the UAE would not escalate its boycott of Qatar by asking companies to choose between doing business with it or with Qatar, and that there were signs the pressure on Doha was working.

The UAE has welcomed the US-Qatar agreement to stem funding for terrorism, seeing that it was a positive development. However, the Arab states have said it is not enough. The agreement between Doha and Washington was signed during US secretary of state Rex Tillerson’s four-day mediation mission to try and end the rift between Qatar and its neighbours.