DOHA, Jan 3 (Reuters) – World number two Rafa Nadal survived a scare in the first round of the Qatar Open on Tuesday, recovering from a break down in the final set to defeat Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-3 6-7 6-3.

Nadal, who has been troubled by a shoulder injury for several weeks, was in imperious form in the first set and broke his opponent to go 3-1 up with a crosscourt forehand winner. He went on to seal the set by ending a furious exchange at the net with a simple volley winner.

Kohlschreiber appeared to be heading for his eighth successive defeat by Nadal but stunned the 10-times grand slam winner by racing into a 3-0 lead in the second set.

At 4-2 up, Kohlschreiber netted a backhand to give Nadal a break back. The relentless power of Nadal’s shots left Kohlschreiber scrambling but he clung on to take the set into a tiebreak.

A brilliant crosscourt winner past a diving Nadal allowed Kohlschreiber to go 2-0 ahead in the tiebreak and he held on to bag it 7-2.

Kohlschreiber started the deciding set in similar fashion, running to a errant Nadal drop volley to hammer a forehand winner down the line to break serve.

But that only served to stir Nadal from his slumber, who broke back immediately and surged into a 4-1 lead he never looked like relinquishing.

DOHA (Reuters) – Jo-Wilfried Tsonga laboured to a first-round victory at the Qatar Open on Tuesday, defeating wildcard Malek Jaziri in three sets in blustery conditions.

The third-seeded Frenchman triumphed 7-6 6-7 6-1 after struggling with his forehand on Doha’s centre court.

“I played a lot last year to come back into the top 10, it was really difficult for me,” Tsonga said in a courtside interview.

“I came into this tournament without very good preparation. However, I’m here and hopefully I will play good tennis.”

The first two sets went with serve as the players traded tiebreaks before Tsonga, ranked six in the world, took a 3-1 lead in the final set, winning the next two games to love as he wore down the bulky Jaziri.

Tsonga, 26, played a clever lob to earn two match points, sealing victory after the Tunisian put a forehand into the net.

There was little between the players in the first two sets. At 6-5 ahead in the first, Tsonga missed a straightforward forehand to allow his opponent to pull level.

DOHA, Jan 3 (Reuters) – Jo-Wilfried Tsonga laboured to a first-round victory at the Qatar Open on Tuesday, defeating wildcard Malek Jaziri in three sets in blustery conditions.

The third-seeded Frenchman triumphed 7-6 6-7 6-1 after struggling with his forehand on Doha’s centre court.

“I played a lot last year to come back into the top 10, it was really difficult for me,” Tsonga said in a courtside interview.

“I came into this tournament without very good preparation. However, I’m here and hopefully I will play good tennis.”

The first two sets went with serve as the players traded tiebreaks before Tsonga, ranked six in the world, took a 3-1 lead in the final set, winning the next two games to love as he wore down the bulky Jaziri.

Tsonga, 26, played a clever lob to earn two match points, sealing victory after the Tunisian put a forehand into the net.

There was little between the players in the first two sets. At 6-5 ahead in the first, Tsonga missed a straightforward forehand to allow his opponent to pull level.

DOHA (Reuters) – David Beckham will not join Paris St Germain due to family reasons, the big-spending Ligue 1 football club’s president Nasser al-Khelaifi told Reuters in Qatar on Tuesday.

“We didn’t reach an agreement – he’s a great player, I met him and it’s bad luck we didn’t reach an agreement,” al-Khelaifi said on the sidelines of a news conference in Doha.

“We weren’t far (from reaching an agreement), but there are family issues and I think that was the reason. It was very difficult to move the family.”

The former England captain had been linked with a possible move to the Qatar-backed Ligue 1 pacesetters last month given that his contract with Los Angeles Galaxy ran out on December 31.

However with four children and his singer and fashion designer wife Victoria based in California, the move fell through.

“It’s over. It’s a shame. But the welfare of his family in Los Angeles, the wish not to change everything in his life, weighed heavily,” said PSG sporting director Leonardo.

Al-Khelaifi told French radio station RMC the 36-year-old midfielder would stay in the United States, saying: “David Beckham is in Los Angeles and he’s going to stay over there.”

DOHA, Jan 3 (Reuters) – David Beckham will not join Paris St Germain due to family reasons, the big-spending Ligue 1 soccer club’s president Nasser al-Khelaifi told Reuters in Qatar on Tuesday.

“We didn’t reach an agreement – he’s a great player, I met him and it’s bad luck we didn’t reach an agreement,” al-Khelaifi said on the sidelines of a news conference in Doha.

“We weren’t far (from reaching an agreement), but there are family issues and I think that was the reason. It was very difficult to move the family.”

The former England captain had been linked with a possible move to the Qatar-backed Ligue 1 pacesetters last month given that his contract with Los Angeles Galaxy ran out on Dec. 31.

However with four children and his singer and fashion designer wife Victoria based in California, the move fell through.

“It’s over. It’s a shame. But the welfare of his family in Los Angeles, the wish not to change everything in his life, weighed heavily,” said PSG sporting director Leonardo.

Al-Khelaifi told French radio station RMC the 36-year-old midfielder would stay in the United States, saying: “David Beckham is in Los Angeles and he’s going to stay over there.”

DUBAI, Dec 20 (Reuters) – Yemeni mobile operator Sabafon said on Tuesday that its facilities had come under repeated attack by state forces because of its chairman’s support for protests aiming to end the 33-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

A spokesman for Sabafon, which is 27-percent owned by Bahrain Telecommunications Co (Batelco), told Reuters from Sanaa the company’s headquarters had been hit three times by rocket-propelled grenades this year.

He said more than 250 transmission towers and other sites – about a quarter of its facilities — had been subject to shelling, gunfire and looting, killing one employee.

Sabafon subscribers cannot receive or make calls to Yemen landlines or phone abroad, illustrating the toll nearly a year of strife in the impoverished Gulf nation has taken on basic services.

“The damage continues … employees were afraid to attend the headquarters and many sites were shut down, which dramatically affected operations and the company’s ability to provide services,” said the spokesman.

“These led to an exodus of subscribers to other providers. These unlawful measures are part of a punishment by the authorities on Sabafon because of the position of its chairman, who supports the peaceful popular revolution in Yemen.”

An official of Saleh’s General People’s Congress (GPC) denied Sabafon was deliberately targeted, and that whatever damages it may have suffered came in the context of hostilities instigated by gunmen allied to Sabafon chairman and major shareholder Hamid al-Ahmar.

DUBAI, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Index compiler MSCI’s latest snub to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar underlines the need for the Gulf neighbours to push through reforms, but problems plaguing UAE stocks run deep and investor apathy is a big worry.

On Wednesday, MSCI kept the two energy exporters as frontier markets, the third time it has opted not to give them emerging market status. They will be reviewed again in June 2012.

MSCI urged the UAE to introduce new regulations to allow securities borrowing and short-selling and repeated a plea to Qatar to raise foreign ownership limits from 25 percent.

“Securities borrowing will help solve the consequences of failed trades and so may end up solving the main problem international investors have, which is that in certain conditions their holdings may be sold without their consent,” Remy Briand, global head of index research at MSCI, told a conference call for reporters on Thursday.

“There must be time not only to implement the regulation, market participants need to be able to test it and there’s not a lot of time between now and June.”

Dubai shares fell in response to the decision, taking their losses to about 17 percent this year.

Yet the stocks were already languishing near 7-year lows, showing investors are concerned about other issues such as a lack of diversification and a degree of opacity that is especially difficult to accept when returns are meagre.

DUBAI, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Index compiler MSCI’s latest snub to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar underlines the need for the Gulf neighbours to push through reforms, but problems plaguing UAE stocks run a lot deeper and investor apathy is a big worry.

On Wednesday, MSCI kept the two energy exporters as frontier markets, the third time it has opted not to give them emerging market status.

It urged the UAE to introduce new regulations to allow securities borrowing and short-selling and repeated a plea to Qatar to raise foreign ownership limits from 25 percent.

Dubai shares fell sharply in early trade in response to the decision, taking their losses to near 17 percent this year.

Yet the stocks have languished near 7-year lows for the past few weeks, showing investors were already fretting about other issues such as a lack of diversification and a degree of opacity that is especially worrisome when returns are meagre.

“Probably the biggest factor for MSCI clients is the shortage of liquidity on UAE markets,” said Jeff Singer, chief executive of Nasdaq Dubai, one of three bourses in the UAE.

Turnover on the Dubai Financial Market, Nasdaq Dubai’s sister bourse, is about a tenth of that of 2008, while the Dubai index is down 78 percent from a 2008 peak.

DUBAI, Dec 13 (Reuters) – Low market liquidity in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar’s failure to raise foreign ownership limits threaten to deny MSCI emerging market status to the Gulf neighbours for a third time on Wednesday.

Index provider MSCI rates both the UAE and Qatar as frontier markets. It opted not to upgrade the pair at its reviews in 2009 and 2010, and was due to taken a decision in June this year but postponed its verdict to Dec. 14.

It said the delay was partly to allow market players more time to assess new delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement systems, which some of the bourses introduced in 2011.

MSCI has warned Qatar would be disqualified because of its 25 percent foreign ownership limit, but the gas-rich nation has not amended the ceiling, saying it was up to individual companies to open up their shares more to non-Qataris.

“I doubt it will happen for the UAE or Qatar, although the decision is not as clear-cut as we previously thought,” said Fahd Iqbal, EFG Hermes strategist.

“Qatar is unlikely to make it because of the foreign ownership limits — investors want broader access to stocks.

“The UAE is in a better position because almost everything is in place — it just needs favourable feedback from market players and that is very difficult to predict.”

DUBAI, Dec 7 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia will issue three mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) licences in 2012, the country’s telecoms regulator told Reuters, a move analysts say makes it unlikely the kingdom will award a fourth conventional mobile licence.

MVNOs are mobile service providers which lease excess network capacity from telecoms operators and are common in Europe. In the Gulf, only Oman has issued MVNO licences, with other governments seemingly keen to protect existing operators.

A spokesman for the Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) confirmed by email it would sell the MVNO licences next year, but did not provide more details.

The regulator’s move to allow MVNOs instead of granting a fourth telecoms licence is a sign Saudi operators are moving towards competing on service rather than focusing on building their own infrastructure.

For example, Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) has designed products customised for target groups such as fans of Al-Hilal soccer club and Filipino expatriates and is in talks to merge its tower operations with those of Saudi Telecom Co .

“Stagnating subscriber growth and falling margins mean telecoms operators must use their resources more efficiently,” said Matthew Reed, a senior analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media in Dubai.

“Operators tended to think allowing MVNOs would just mean more competition, but that perception is changing with a realisation that hosting an MVNO can give them advantages over other operators who do not.”