ON one and the same day, last Sunday, two senior foreign officials who were visiting Cairo expressed high estimation of Egypt’s current foreign policy, lauding it for being characteristically balanced, rational and reflective of the country’s genuine orientation for peace-making and peace-keeping. In remarks during separate meetings with President Abdel fattah El Sisi, the two officials, French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and Pakistani Armed Forces Chief of the Joint Staff Gen Nadeem Raza, made special reference in this context to Egypt’s success in bringing about a Palestinian-Israeli truce and its subsequent, energetic moves to stabilise the ceasefire. Such efforts, the French minister noted, reassert Egypt’s importance as a pole of stability and peace in the Middle East region. And in the words of the Pakistani Armed Forces commander, Egypt is a cornerstone of regional stability. By seeking to promote stability and security and achieve political solutions to crises in the region, Egypt is in fact laying the brickwork for the maintenance of peace and for enabling countries and peoples of the region to move ahead in the direction of achieving development and the much aspired prosperity. The remarks that the two officials made during their visits to Cairo were the latest in a series of acknowledgements of Cairo’s serious and worthy efforts to establish a ceasefire between the Palestinians and Israelis, stabilise it and building on it to launch a political track conducive to achieving a comprehensive and just settlement of the Palestinian cause. Such acknowledgements were voiced as news of Cairo’s successful brokering of the ceasefire was aired. US President Biden expressed thanks to President Sisi and the senior Egyptian officials for the pivotal role undertaken to firm up the ceasefire. Welcoming responses also came from Moscow, London, the EU Commission in Brussels, Beijing, Tokyo and many more capitals worldwide.
Viewed in perspective, the Egyptian initiative to bring the Palestinians and Israelis to agree to a ceasefire and to put forward ideas for stabilising it as a prelude to launching a meaningful political track constitutes the latest and clearest manifestation of the energetic foreign policy that Egypt has developed under President Sisi’s leadership since his election to the post seven years ago. And concomitantly with attaching top priority to peace-making, Egypt has over those years demonstrated marked keenness on peace-keeping as so is represented by the country’s active participation in UN peace-keeping missions given that efforts in this direction are an integral component of the country’s foreign policy in its overall and established orientation to promote peace, stability and mutually rewarding co-operation between countries.
In addition to this distinguishing characteristic, Egypt has over the past seven years managed to link foreign policy to the requirements and considerations of national development. During the French economy minister’s visit to Cairo the other day, a package of agreements were concluded to support development-oriented projects in the key fields of transport, housing, health and electricity, to cite just one and the latest example of effectuating the linkage between foreign policy and the requirements of economic growth. And the French minister’s assertion that Paris views Egypt as a most favoured country in terms of investment activities, project financing programmes and multiple co-operation implied sufficient evidence of the worthiness of Egypt’s efforts and moves to optimise the diplomacy-development nexus. Mention may be made in this connection to President Sisi’s keenness on promoting, during his trips abroad as well as in meetings with visiting political leaders and business delegations, the vast opportunities now existing in Egypt for the growth of promising investments as the country has introduced significant administrative and economic reforms and is launching several infrastructure and industrial development projects.
