Obama to meet Qatar’s leader on Tuesday

President Obama will meet with the emir of Qatar on Tuesday to discuss economic, political and national security issues, the White House said in a statement on Friday. 

Qatar is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But fissures have appeared within the coalition, with Qatar recently chastising Egypt for conducting its own airstrike against the militants in retaliation for the beheading of Egyptian Christians. 

{mosads}The meeting comes just days after Obama’s address to representatives from a group of 60 nations, including Qatar, at his summit on combating violent extremism. He warned the nations that they must have a strong commitment to human rights in order to move forward, and White House press secretary Josh Earnest implied that the theme could come up again during the meeting.

“I don’t want to preview those discussions but it wasn’t a coincidence that the president was talking about human rights in urging those leaders to be cognizant of universal human values and to do their part to protect them,” Earnest said when asked about the fact that some countries involved in the anti-ISIS coalition, including Qatar, face allegations of human rights violations.

“We do have important relationships with those countries, they are valuable to enhancing U.S. national security around the globe, and yes, the president believes that it would be clearly in the interest of those countries, their leaders and our national security if many of those countries did a better job of protecting the basic universal human rights of their citizens.”