El-Sisi in historic visit to Iraq as three-nation summit begins
• First Egyptian leader in Baghdad for 30 years • Talks with Iraqi officials and Jordan’s king
Barham Saleh President of Iraq
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Sunday became the first Egyptian head of state to visit Iraq in more than 30 years.
El-Sisi was in Baghdad for landmark three-nation talks with King Abdullah of Jordan, and Iraq’s President Barham Saleh and Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi.
Saleh said the meeting was “an eloquent message amid enormous regional challenges.”
He said: “Iraq’s recovery paves the way to an integrated system for our region built on the fight against extremism, respect for sovereignty and economic partnership.”
El-Sisi told Saleh that Egypt “looked forward to developing cooperation with Iraq into a sustainable framework of economic integration and strategic cooperation.”
He is the first Egyptian president to visit Baghdad since Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded Kuwait in 1990. The war ruptured diplomatic relations between Iraq and Egypt, but these have improved in recent years with many senior officials from both countries exchanging visits.
The US has been urging Iraq to boost ties with Arab nations to counter Iran’s influence. The Jordanian king visited in early 2019 for the first time in 10 years.
Al-Khadhimi, El-Sisi and Abdullah held a summit in Amman last year and were due to hold another in Baghdad in April, but it was delayed after a deadly train crash in Egypt.
Egypt signed 15 agreements in sectors including oil, roads, housing, construction and trade in February after Iraq renewed its contract to supply the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation with 12 million barrels of Basra light crude oil.
Iraq is also planning to build a pipeline that is meant to export 1 million barrels per day of Iraqi crude from the southern city of Basra to Jordan’s Red Sea Port of Aqaba.
“There are genuine economic benefits that come from the ‘Arab
Alliance’ for all three partners, notably on energy diplomacy,” said Hafsa Halawa of the Middle East Institute.
She said there was an expectation that stronger relationships could reinvigorate US engagement in the region.
“The hope remains that certain aspects of this alliance can pull Iraq slightly out of Iran’s orbit of influence, but not by rushing back into US arms and falling into the binary of being stuck between Washington and Tehran,”she said.