On Tuesday, Feb 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is paying a visit to Cairo, met with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The meeting was followed by a news conference.
The key topics of the meeting were fight with terrorism and economic ties, including cooperation in military-technical and oil-gas spheres.
Putin said that Russia and Egypt would focus on a number of new investment projects in transport, machine building and chemistry. He said that the projects would be supervised by the Russian-Egyptian intergovernmental commission.
“We have agreed to enlarge opportunities for small and medium-sized companies. Egypt already has over 400 companies with Russian capital. In this light, we expect high activity from the Russian-Egyptian Business Council, which resumed its work last year,” Putin said.
According to the Russian president, humanitarian relations are one of the key components of the Russian-Egyptian cooperation. “The flow of Russian tourists to Egypt has been steadily growing in recent years. As many as 3,000,000 Russian citizens visited Egyptian resorts in 2014. This is 50% more than in 2013 and this is the result of the political stability achieved by President al-Sisi,” Putin said.
Al-Sisi said that Russia and Egypt would strengthen cooperation in tourism. He expressed hope that Russia would help Egypt to stimulate tourism in his country.
The key element of the Russian-Egyptian cooperation, according to al-Sisi, will be fight with terrorism. “We have confirmed our commitment to jointly confront modern challenges, including terrorism. We have also pointed out that we must fight terrorism in all directions, this including ideology and social-economic issues,” al-Sisi said.
Putin hopes that the inter-Syrian dialogue will be continued and will result in peace. “I have told the Egyptian President about the results of our meeting with the Syrian opposition and al-Assad’s representatives in Moscow. We hope that the next round of the talks will result in a peaceful solution to this problem,” Putin said.
As a result of the meeting the Russian and Egyptian sides have signed an agreement on nuclear energy. “This agreement is not only about building a nuclear power plant but also about creating a whole new nuclear industry in Egypt,” the Russian president said.