CAIRO — US Secretary of Defense James Mattis meets Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and top brass in Cairo on Thursday, pledging support for the American ally on his first regional tour.
The brief visit, with Mattis later setting off to Israel, comes after Sissi hit it off with Trump during a White House meeting earlier this month.
Sissi’s visit marked a shift in relations after Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama had given the Egyptian leader the cold shoulder for leading the military overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in 2013.
Egypt’s Minister of Defence Sedki Sobhy welcomes US Defense Secretary James Mattis at the Ministry of Defense in Cairo on April 20, 2017. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool/AFP)
The meeting “addressed aspects of military and security cooperation between the two countries and ways to further enhance them,” Sissi’s office says in a statement.
Sissi tells Mattis he wants to “strengthen the ongoing military cooperation between the two countries,” it says.
Mattis in turn “reiterated the US’s commitment to reinvigorating these relations and broadening prospects for cooperation,” it adds.
Mattis is now flying to Israel on the next leg of his tour, which started in Saudi Arabia.
— AFP
Discover Israel's most beloved poet
She died more than four decades ago, but Leah Goldberg remains a magnetic and enigmatic figure: Israel’s most beloved poet, a powerful woman who lived with her mother and never married, who reinvented herself from the ashes of World War I through her magical writing.
You can screen 'The Five Houses of Leah Goldberg' June 4-11. Join The Times of Israel Community today to support our work and watch this and other outstanding documentary films in our DocuNation series.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
From the Liveblog of
Thursday, April 20, 2017
