Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has declared that the Gulf crisis remains at a "stalemate", adding that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is currently in a "paralysis".
Sheikh Mohammed spoke to reporters on Friday, following a US-backed meeting between foreign ministers of the six member states of the GCC, Egypt and Jordan in New York.
Sheikh Mohammed said that unless the issue of the Saudi Arabia-led blockade is addressed first, a regional alliance envisioned by the United States would not be effective.
"This gathering is important. But we need to address the challenges among these countries," in order to prove the "credibility" of the alliance, he said speaking in Arabic and English.
Almost 50 people have been confirmed dead after a 7.5-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami rocked the Indonesian island of Sulawesi on Friday.
Hospitals reported the deaths of at least 48 people from the city of Palu alone. Thousands of buildings were also destroyed by the quake, which was centered about 48 miles north of Palu, according to the United States Geological Survey.
“We have found corpses from the earthquake as well as bodies swept up by the tsunami,” said Indonesia’s disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho on Saturday.
Preparations for a beach festival were being made in Palu when waves struck, he said, adding that houses had been swept away and families remain missing.
The death toll from the disasters are expected to rise, he continued.
Indonesia’s military dispatched cargo planes Saturday carrying medical supplies to affected areas, but rescue efforts have been hampered after communications around Palu and a nearby fishing village, Donggala, which lies close to the earthquake’s epicentre, had been downed.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is regularly hit by earthquakes. Friday's tremors came weeks after 460 people were killed following an earthquake on the Indonesian island of Lombok, destroying tens of thousands of buildings and displacing over 400,000 people.