The foreign ministers of Qatar and the United States met Thursday on the sidelines of the meeting of foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Cambodia and discussed the situation in Afghanistan.

In this meeting, Doha-Washington bilateral cooperation, developments in Afghanistan, the latest developments related to the Iran nuclear agreement negotiations, as well as some common regional and international issues were discussed.

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani discussed the joint relations between Doha and Washington and the developments in Afghanistan.

“It’s a great pleasure, as always, to be with my friend, the foreign minister of Qatar, who we have spent a lot of time together in various parts of the world and on the phone, and I think this is evidence of the very close partnership between Qatar and the United States on a broad range of both regional and global issues.  We had an opportunity to just spend some time talking about a number of them, to include Afghanistan, to include Iran, to include some other regional issues, and of course to talk a little bit about the work that we’re doing here in Cambodia,” said Blinken.

The latest developments related to the Iran nuclear agreement negotiations, as well as some regional and international common issues, were other issues that have been discussed between the two Qatari and US counterparts.

“I think the world events requires consultation between both of us, especially what’s going on in our region.  I think our discussion today is very important for the security for – for the security of our region.  And we really appreciate the relationship and the partnership and the commitment that the U.S. has toward our region,” said Al-Thani.

What the US officials had previously announced was that Qatar has the role of protecting US interests in Afghanistan, and including the American Embassy, ​​the embassies of most Western countries that were in Kabul after the fall of the former regime in Afghanistan moved their activities to Doha, the capital of Qatar.

This meeting took place after the claim that the leader of al-Qaeda was killed in an attack by the US drone in Kabul. Although it is not yet clear which country this plane took off from, but Qatar, which is the guardian of US interests in Afghanistan, has not reacted to this attack so far.