Qatari Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Al-Khulaifi expressed his country's frustration on Sunday with the slow progress in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, while stressing Doha's commitment to continuing its efforts to revive the agreement despite the difficulties.

This came in an interview with Agence France-Presse, during which he indicated that Qatar "has been working in recent days to try to bring the two sides together and revive the agreement they had agreed upon," following a new round of negotiations that failed to produce an agreement, despite nearly a month having passed since the resumption of the war on Gaza.

"We are certainly frustrated by the slow pace of the negotiation process... This is an urgent matter, and lives are at stake if the military operation continues day after day," Al-Khalifi said, according to a report by Agence France-Presse on Sunday.

Qatar, along with the United States and Egypt, is mediating the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The first phase of the agreement went into effect in mid-January, before Israel announced the resumption of the war and refused to move to the next phase of the agreement on March 18.

In response to Israel's repeated criticism of Doha and its role, Al-Khalifi said, "We have been receiving this type of criticism and negative comments since the beginning of our involvement (in mediating to end the war)," noting that "the criticisms we constantly hear from Benjamin Netanyahu himself are baseless and often just noise."

Doha had previously described Israeli media attacks against it as a "smear campaign," denying the validity of an investigation attributed to the Shin Bet security service that alleged that Qatari aid to Gaza was used to bolster Hamas's military capabilities.

In this context, the Qatari International Media Office stressed last March that "no aid was delivered to either the political or military wings of the movement."

Responding to allegations made by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu during an interview with the Christian television channel Daystar during his recent visit to Washington, in which he accused Qatar of inciting against the United States and Zionism on American universities, Al-Khalifi said, "Everything Qatar does is transparent," adding that "Netanyahu's allegations regarding Qatar's educational partnerships have been refuted more than once."

Regarding international mediation, Al-Khulaifi pointed to the development of Qatar's role in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He described the meeting held last March between Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, in Doha as "an important step toward calming the conflict." He noted that Qatar "has succeeded in building a flexible line of communication between the two sides, and we hope to achieve further successes, which you will hear about in the coming days."

Regarding the Syrian issue, Al-Khulaifi said that Qatar intends to discuss the sanctions imposed on Damascus with the US side following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime. It will also discuss with its regional partners the issue of increasing public sector salaries and potential Qatari funding for gas supplies to Syria.