WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States hopes to move forward with naming Qatar as a major non-NATO ally, a status that provides foreign nations with some benefits in defense trade and security cooperation, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.
“We’re going to move ahead, we hope, with designating Qatar a major non-NATO ally,” Timothy Lenderking, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Gulf Affairs, told reporters in a conference call.
Qatar’s Government Communications Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting By Daphne Psaledakis and Arshad Mohammed; Additional Reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
