Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has expressed hope that his government could take the Egypt-India ties to a higher level.
After holding a meeting with President el-Sisi in Al Alamein over the weekend, Indian Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar said: “President el-Sisi’s great desire for taking our relationship, which is already very good, to much higher level is very sincere and is a very powerful pillar of our bilateral relations and it gives us hope for great revival.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

The Indian minister said that they discussed various ways to bolster bilateral ties and also important regional and global issues. Akbar told the local media that both Cairo and New Delhi have always taken necessary steps to strengthen co-operation “not simply on government-to-government level, but how to improve partnership on a people-to-people level”. The visiting minister stressed that it would be important for the two “friendly” nations to join hands once again in order to restore peace in West Asia and South Asia.
Meanwhile, President el-Sisi received a letter, written by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, from Akbar. In his letter, Premier Modi thanked Cairo for supporting the Indian candidate at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). “This is a message of renewal relations and it also elaborates how we can work together both in multilateral and bilateral issues,” wrote Modi. He recalled that the South Asian nation had backed the Egyptian candidate for the Secretary General of UNESCO.

Modi

Modi and el-Sisi have not only worked hard to take the bilateral ties to a new level, but also developed a “very good warm friendship”. In recent years, they have met four times.
Akbar showered praises on President el-Sisi for making serious efforts to normalise the political situation in West Asia, saying: “Egypt has always played a very important, even critical, role in shaping the Middle East. It is one of the countries which make the difference.”

M J Akbar

Before leaving for India, the minister laid a wreath at Indian soldiers’ cemetery at Alamein. He said that he was happy to visit the country at a time when Egypt was marking the 75th anniversary of the historic battle of El-Alamein. On the occasion, he remembered the Indian soldiers’ valiant sacrifices in the WWII. ‘The decisive battle of El-Alamein started on October 23, 1942 when British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery declared a war against the Afrika Korps of Germany’s Erwin Rommel. The battle managed to halt the advance of the Axis powers in North Africa and paved the way for the final victory there in 1943.

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Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das