Qatar's emir held talks in Sudan on Wednesday at a time of strained ties with his country's Gulf neighbors over its perceived support for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani was greeted at Khartoum airport by Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, for what an analyst called a meeting of two regionally-isolated regimes.

A top Dubai security official, General Dahi Khalfan, has claimed Qatar as forming part of the United Arab Emirates, adding a new dimension to a dispute with Doha.

"Qatar is an integral part of the UAE," the outspoken Khalfan, a longtime critic of the Doha-backed Muslim Brotherhood, wrote on Twitter on Monday, demanding his country "reclaim" Qatar.

An Egyptian court on Monday rejected a plea for bail by jailed Al-Jazeera journalists, who denied links with the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood in a trial that has sparked international condemnation.

The journalists, who have spent nearly 100 days in jail since their arrest, are charged with spreading false news and supporting the Islamist movement of deposed president Mohammed Morsi.

The emir of energy-rich Qatar, a key backer of Sudan's Islamist regime, visits cash-strapped Khartoum next week for talks on bolstering ties, official media said on Saturday.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani's one-day trip Wednesday will come as tensions reached unprecedented levels between Doha and other Gulf states over its perceived support for the widely-banned Muslim Brotherhood.

A Doha court on Thursday sentenced a Qatari national to death for the murder last year of 24-year-old British teacher Lauren Patterson, a judicial source said.

A second Qatari, Mohammed Hasan Abdulaziz, was given three years in prison for aiding the first convict, Badr Khamis Abdullah Hashim in "burning the body of Lauren Patterson and erasing evidence" of the murder, the source said.

A Qatari court on Thursday condemned a U.S. couple from Los Angeles to three years in prison for causing the death of their adopted eight-year-old daughter.

Matthew and Grace Huang were arrested in January 2013 after their daughter Gloria from Ghana died and accused of causing her death in order to sell her organs.

An Arab League summit opens in Kuwait on Tuesday at a time of deepening rifts between its member states and without any end in sight to the Syrian conflict.

With Doha in the eye of the storm, the region's leaders are expected to discuss the row which has pitted Qatar against Gulf partners Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as Egypt.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal has warned there will only be rapprochement between Riyadh and Doha when Qatar "modifies" policies at the center of their spat, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates earlier this month recalled their ambassadors from Qatar after accusing the fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state of interfering in their internal affairs and of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

Saudi Arabia demanded that Qatar shut down Al-Jazeera and two think tanks during a recent meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a source close to someone who attended the talks told AFP Friday.

Riyadh demanded the closure of the pan-Arab broadcaster as well as the Brookings Doha Center and the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Arab central bank governors of the energy-rich Gulf met Wednesday in Kuwait to discuss combating terror funding and boosting cooperation, despite a tense diplomatic row between its member states.

"We are a technical committee which does not interfere in politics," Kuwait's central bank governor Mohammad al-Hashel told reporters.