Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi arrives at Palam Air Force Station in New Delhi on January 24, 2023. , Photo Credit: PTI
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi arrived here on Tuesday on a four-day state visit. Mr. Sisi is the first Egyptian leader to be invited as the chief guest for the Republic Day parade.
During the visit, officials said, the two sides will sign several MoUs and discuss strategic issues, defense, trade, agriculture and renewable energy to take the relationship forward.
The invitation to Mr. Sisi is also seen as part of the government’s push to engage the “Global South”, and as a re-introduction of principles of non-alignment after the Russian war in Ukraine began. Is. February last year. Mr. Sisi, who has visited India twice before, is expected to return later this year for the G-20 summit, where India has invited Egypt as a special guest country.
“Even without coordination, Egypt and India have equal positions in the United Nations today. We have civilizational links, and the way our thinking has evolved – the principles of non-intervention, respect for sovereignty, no use of force – are all relevant today, as we have seen in the recent Ukraine conflict,” A senior Egyptian diplomat who previously served as ambassador to India The Hindu.
India’s former ambassador to Egypt, Navdeep Suri, said inviting Mr. Sisi as the chief guest for the Republic Day was an “important gesture” by the Modi government at a time when the world was “re-discovering multipolarity”. He pointed out that the Modi government had made an exception for Egypt in the wake of Western sanctions against Russia for the war in Ukraine and a ban on wheat exports to India.
“As the world’s biggest wheat importer from Ukraine and Russia, Egypt was in a uniquely vulnerable position, and India’s aid could make a huge difference in supply,” he said. “The fact is that in a world where the need for strategic autonomy is replacing many traditional alliances in the developing world, India and Egypt are finding more and more commonalities,” he said.
India and Egypt were co-founders of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in 1961 along with Yugoslavia, Indonesia and Ghana. Relations between India and Egypt grew under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and President Gamal Abdel Nasser, especially after India’s support to Egypt during the 1956 Suez Crisis. However, despite continuing high-level visits and keeping its commitment to NAM strong, bilateral relations between the two countries declined over time, especially India’s relations with the Gulf countries, where the Indian diaspora was based and Most of its oil was bought, strengthened. President Hosni Mubarak visited India in 2008, followed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Egypt for the NAM summit in 2009 and President Mohamed Morsi’s visit in 2013.
After assuming office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited President Sisi for the India-Africa Summit in 2015 and a state visit in 2016. To do this, indicate a possible change from the grouping. (In 2020, Mr Modi participated in a virtual meeting of the NAM Contact Group summit hosted by Azerbaijan regarding the COVID-19 pandemic).
“I can tell you that the core principles, the founding principles, of the Non-Aligned Movement have not disappeared. There may have been some global changes that have pushed the Non-Aligned Movement itself into the background, but that does not change our position,” Senior Egyptian diplomat engaged in preparations for Sisi’s visit to India, who did not wish to be identified, said, pointing out that “South-South Cooperation” and the G-77 in which India and Egypt are actively involved, NAM were the products of the movement.
“With a population of nearly 110 million, a location that straddles Africa and Asia, a standing army that is the largest in the region, a capital that hosts the League of Arab States and a diplomatic presence that plays an important role in global affairs, punches above its weight, Egypt is an important player,” Mr Suri wrote in an article for ORF magazine this month, adding that Mr Modi’s visit to Egypt was now “overdue”, given that in 2020 A planned visit had to be postponed due to the pandemic and Mr Modi did not attend the CoP27 climate change conference in Sharm El Sheikh in November 2022.