Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani considered, in a television interview broadcast on Thursday evening, that talk of Syria's return to the Arab League is "speculation," stressing that the reasons for suspending Damascus' membership still exist for Doha.

"Qatar's decision is not to take any step if there is no political solution to the Syrian crisis," the official told state television.

He added that with regard to other countries, "every country has its own assessment and this is a sovereign decision pertaining to it, but the State of Qatar adheres to this position to this day. Until now, there is nothing but speculation, and nothing clear is on the table."

The prime minister was speaking on the eve of a meeting between the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt in Jeddah to discuss the issue of Syria's isolation.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman, whose country supported the Syrian opposition during the years of the conflict, said, "There were reasons to suspend Syria's membership in the Arab League and to boycott the Syrian regime at that time, and these reasons still exist for us, at least in the State of Qatar."

He added, "The war has stopped, but the Syrian people are still displaced and innocent people are in prisons. We do not want to impose solutions on the Syrian people, who must reach a solution and there must be a political solution to the Syrian crisis."

On Friday, Saudi Arabia will host the meeting in Jeddah to exchange views on the return of Syria to the Arab incubator, in the midst of major regional diplomatic moves with which the political landscape in the region has changed since Riyadh and Tehran agreed to resume relations last month.

An Arab diplomat in Riyadh told AFP, on condition of anonymity, that "the purpose of the meeting is to overcome the Gulf differences over Syria as much as possible."

For its part, the Syrian National Coalition, an opposition group that operates the Syrian embassy in Doha, praised the Qatari position on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

"We appreciate the firm Qatari position refusing normalization with the Syrian regime," the coalition said in a statement. He stressed that the Syrian people are still "suffering the bitterness of displacement, bombing and arrest to this day."