DUBAI — Qatar announced the appointment of Sultan Al Mansouri as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates after a six-year vacancy in the position beginning with the prolonged 2017 Gulf crisis.
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, appointed Mansouri as “Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,” wrote the state-run Qatar News Agency in a press release on Sunday.
The appointment takes place months after the two countries reopened their respective embassies in June, two and half years after Qatar and the UAE reconciled in January 2021. The Gulf dispute began in June 2017 with the suspension of diplomatic ties and a blockade on Qatar imposed by Egypt and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council countries Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain.
Mansouri is a career diplomat who previously served as Qatar’s ambassador to Austria in 2019 and also held the position of permanent representative to the United Nations and international organizations in Vienna. Before that, he was the ambassador to China starting in 2014.
