REPORT: Qatar says won't "surrender" in row with fellow Gulf Arabs

Qatar said on Thursday fellow Arab states' move to isolate it in a row over alleged ties to terrorism is endangering stability in the oil-rich Gulf region but it was not ready to change its foreign policy to settle the dispute and would never compromise.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani spoke as would-be mediators ranging from US President Donald Trump to Kuwait's ruling emir struggled to ease a crisis that Qataris say has led to a blockade of their nation.

"We have been isolated because we are successful and progressive. We are a platform for peace not terrorism ... This dispute is threatening the stability of the entire region," Sheikh Mohammed told reporters in Doha.

"We are not ready to surrender, and will never be ready to surrender, the independence of our foreign policy."

Sheikh Mohammed said Qatar had not yet been presented with a list of demands by countries that cut off diplomatic and transport links with it, but insisted the matter be solved peacefully. "There cannot ever be a military solution to this problem."

Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Egypt severed relations with Doha on Monday, accusing it of supporting Islamist militants and their arch-adversary Iran - charges Qatar calls baseless. Several other countries later followed suit.

Sheikh Mohammed said Iran had told Doha it was ready to help with securing food supplies in the emirate, an investment powerhouse and supplier of natural gas to world markets but tiny and reliant on imports.

Normally guarded about politics, Qataris expressed outrage.

"It is a blockade! Like that of Berlin. A declaration of war. A political, economic and social aggression," a Qatari diplomat said. "We need the world to condemn the aggressors."

Saudi Arabia's closure of Qatar's only land border sparked fears of major price hikes and food shortages for its population of 2.7 million people, with long queues forming as some supermarkets began running out of stock.

With supply chains disrupted and anxiety mounting about deepening economic turbulence, banks and firms in Gulf Arab states were seeking to keep business links to Qatar open and avoid a costly fire sale of assets.

Turkey has brought forward a planned troop deployment to Qatar and pledged to provide food and water supplies to its Arab ally, which hosts a Turkish military base. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said isolating Qatar would not resolve any problems.

The UAE's national postal service, Emirates Post Group, suspended all postal services to Qatar, state news agency WAM said, the latest in a series of measures degrading commercial and communications links with Doha.

The Abu Dhabi Petroleum Ports Authority also re-imposed a ban on oil tankers linked to Qatar calling at ports in the UAE, reversing an earlier decision to ease restrictions and potentially creating a logjam of crude cargoes.

Trump initially took sides with the Saudi-led group before apparently being nudged into a more even-handed approach when US defense officials renewed praise of Doha, mindful of the major US military base hosted by Qatar that serves, in part, as a launchpad for strikes on Islamic State jihadists.

In his second intervention in the dispute in as many days, Trump urged action against terrorism in a call with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, a White House statement said, suggesting a meeting at the White House "if necessary".

It said that Trump, in a later call with Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, called for unity among Gulf Arabs "but never at the expense of eliminating funding for radical extremism or defeating terrorism".

Officials from Qatar and its Arab neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were pursuing shuttle diplomacy, with the Qatari foreign minister due in Moscow and Brussels and Bahrain's king visiting his ally Egypt for talks on the crisis.

The Qatari ambassador to Washington, Meshal Hamad al-Thani, wrote on Twitter that a key pillar of Doha's foreign policy was mediation. "Open channels of communication means venues for conflict resolution," he said.