Egypt asks Qatar to treat Egyptian workers "as brothers"

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Musa asked Qatar on Saturday to treat Egyptian workers there with respect after over 150 were dismissed from their jobs in the country, the Egyptian news agency MENA reported.

He said remarks by Qatari Foreign Minister Muhammad Bin-Jasim Bin-Jabr Al Thani noted respect for Egypt and its people as well as the need for calm between the two countries.

"These statements undoubtedly constitute a step forward and we hope Egyptians in Qatar will be treated as brothers," Musa said, according to MENA.

Musa said Egypt was keen to have good relations with Qatar, as it did with all other Arab countries.

In remarks broadcast by Monte Carlo radio on Saturday, the Egyptian ambassador to Qatar, Muhammad Munaysi, said relations between the two countries were strained.

The radio said the Qatari foreign minister had spoken "at length" on Saturday about the good relationship enjoyed by both sides.

Munaysi said his opinion was based on "actual relations" between the two sides.

"What I am talking about is actual relations on the ground and in reality.

Many Egyptians are being dismissed from their jobs and I hope this is not part of a plan to eradicate Egyptian presence in some fields in Qatar," he said.

He said over 130 Egyptians had been sacked from the Qatari Interior Ministry, over 20 from the Defence Ministry and three from the Telecommunications Agency.

Munaysi said he had been unable to contact any Qatari official about the matter.

He said Qatar had stopped processing residence papers for Egyptians "for a few months" and that no Egyptians had been brought from Egypt to work in Qatar since November 1996.

Munaysi said he believed the measures reflected the continued tension between the two countries.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.