US experts on fighting terror financing have called on Qatar to cooperate with international efforts to stem terrorist groups, foremost among them being Daesh. David Cohen, former deputy director of the CIA, said Saudi Arabia and the UAE had tried to stop Doha fund terrorism, but these efforts had not yet produced the desired results. Cohen expressed concern over lasting divisions among the Gulf states if negotiations with Qatar reached a dead end. "The Gulf region fears that Qatari money is becoming a destabilizing factor in countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt," he added. Cohen pointed out that Saudi Arabia had cooperated in anti-terror efforts and had helped the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt in monitoring the movement of Qatari funds that supported terrorism. For her part, Catherine Bauer, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former Treasury official, said Saudi Arabia and the UAE were trying hard to curb Qatar's terror funding. However, Doha was not showing the same enthusiasm to stamp out terrorism. She pointed out that the boycott against Qatar was initiated because the country did not comply with the Anti-Terrorism Convention that was agreed to in Riyadh recently in the presence of the US President. Juan Zarate, Chairman and cofounder of the Financial Integrity Network and Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ruled out the possibility of a military confrontation between the four boycotting countries and Qatar. Zarate, who is also a national security analyst for NBC, deplored Qatar's position as regards to terror financing and said, "All we want now is to cut the sources of funding for terrorist organizations. Doha is sheltering people like Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and encourages terrorism from within Qatar."
