Putin cultivates Egypt ties
Flying in for his second visit, the Russian leader raised tourism hopes
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin, making his second visit to Egypt in as many years, held talks yesterday with his Egyptian counterpart on their countries’ rapidly expanding ties.
Egypt’s general-turned-president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has visited Russia three times since the ousting of his Islamist predecessor in 2013. Since taking office, el-Sissi has bought billions of dollars’ worth of Russian weapons, including fighter jets and assault helicopters.
The two countries are also in the late stages of negotiations over the construction by a Russian company of Egypt’s first nuclear energy reactor.
Also, Russia last month approved a draft agreement with Egypt to allow Russian planes to use Egyptian military bases, a deal that would mark a significant leap in bilateral ties and evidence of Moscow’s expanding military role in a turbulent Middle East.
That deal, if it goes through, will likely irk the US, until now a top Egypt military ally.
Putin flew to Cairo after a brief and previously unannounced visit to a Russian military air base in Syria.
The air base has served as the main foothold for the air campaign Russia has waged since September 2015 in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad against armed groups opposed to his rule.
El-Sissi met Putin at Cairo’s international airport and the two leaders later went straight to the presidential Ittihadiya Palace in Cairo’s upscale Heliopolis suburb where talks got under way.
Egypt’s currently close ties with Russia harken back to the 1950s and 1960s, when Cairo became Moscow’s closest Arab ally during the peak years of the Cold War.
Egypt changed allies in the 1970s under the late President Anwar Sadat, who replaced Moscow with Washington as his country’s chief economic and military backer following the signing of a US-sponsored peace treaty with Israel. Egypt has since become a major recipient of US economic and military aid.
In what would have been unthinkable during the Cold War, Egypt has under el-Sissi been able to maintain close ties with both Russia and the US.
Egypt, however, has not been able so far to persuade Russia to resume its flights to Egypt, suspended since October 2015 when a suspected bomb brought down a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board.
Egypt has since spent millions of dollars to upgrade security at its airports and undergone numerous checks by Russian experts to ascertain level of security.
The suspension of Russian flights has dealt a blow to Egypt’s vital tourism industry. Britain, another major source of visitors, has since the Russian airliner’s crash also suspended flights to Sharm el-Sheikh, a Red Sea resort in Sinai from which the Russian airliner took off shortly before it crashed.
“Your Excellency: when will Russian tourism return to Egypt?” read the front-page banner headline in a Cairo daily loyal to the government, in both Arabic and Russian.
There have been speculations that el-Sissi and Putin might during the visit finalise and announce a deal on the construction of the nuclear reactor on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, after months of wrangling over technical and financial details.
Egypt and Russia have already initialled an agreement for a $25 billion (R340bn) Russian loan to finance the construction.
Egypt has quietly supported Russia’s military involvement in the Syrian civil war, a policy that had clashed with the position taken by Saudi Arabia, Cairo’s chief ally and financial backer.
The Saudis, however, have softened their opposition to Russian involvement there and taken steps to thaw decades of frosty relations with Moscow.
Both the Saudis and Egyptians,say analysts, are now hoping Russia’s presence in Syria will curtail the growing influence there of Shia, non-Arab Iran, whose expanding leverage in the region has alarmed Cairo and Riyadh.
Egypt, meanwhile, has been raising its own profile in Syria.