Sisi receives Sudan's Omar al-Bashir at Cairo airport

CAIRO - 19 March 2018: President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi received his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir on Monday at the Cairo International Airport.

Both leaders will discuss the outstanding issues between the two countries, based on the agreement reached at the recent Addis Ababa Summit.

The one-day visit will also focus on tackling cooperation across various fields, as well as issues of joint interest, said Egyptian Presidency spokesperson Bassam Radi in a statement on Sunday.

Egyptian relations with Sudan were recently strained over the disputed border area of Halaib and Shalateen. On December 23, 2017, Sudan filed a complaint to the United Nations Secretariat to protest a maritime border demarcation deal between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as the deal denotes the territory as Egyptian on maps.

Halaib and Shalateen, or the Halaib Triangle, is an area of land measuring 20,580 square kilometers, located at the Egyptian-Sudanese border on the Red Sea coast. It is part of the Red Sea governorate and consists of three major towns – Halaib (which became a city in February 2014), Abu Ramad and Shalateen.

The area belongs to Egypt politically and administratively, but has been one of the major sticking points in Egyptian-Sudanese relations since the demarcation of borders between the two countries were carried out during the British occupation of Egypt in 1899, at a time when Sudan was part of the Egyptian Kingdom.