Egyptian president meets with Minister of Defense

CAIRO – 10 December 2020: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met with Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Minister of Defense and Military Production Mohamed Zaki, the Presidency said on Thursday.

This comes one day after the president returned from a visit to Paris, during which he discussed military cooperation with French President Emmanuel Macron, along with many other aspects of cooperation.

During his three-day visit, President Sisi President met on Monday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, where both leaders discussed bilateral relations and different international issues of common interest.

In a joint press conference with Macron, President Sisi made sure it is clear that Egypt rejects any form of violence in response to French blasphemous cartoons, reiterating Al-Azhar’s similar stance that such acts are unjustifiable. It is what many Muslims feel obliged to say even when an act of terror is as abhorrent an alien to them as to anyone else.

“If expressing your opinion hurts the feelings of hundreds of millions and you still believe this expression cannot be rationalized or reviewed… We don’t mean all freedoms or all forms of expression, but only this point,” Sisi said.

“I believe that with the elevated values in France and the developed world that reject jeopardizing the rights and feelings of others… to hurt the feelings of hundreds of millions to the core of their religion and beliefs, I think this can calmly be reckoned with,” he added.

Also, President Sisi expressed hope for enhancing joint cooperation in fields of industry and information technology during a Wednesday meeting with Paris French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire.

Sisi discussed on Tuesday with President of French Senate Gerard Larcher ways of boosting bilateral cooperation in the coming period, especially in the tourism, cultural, and development fields.

He also met with Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, on Monday. President Sisi dicussed the size and diversity of the major national projects underway in Egypt, which provides multiple areas for joint cooperation in the newly-built cities, especially the new administrative capital, besides the tourism and antiquities sector, Radi continued, noting that President focused on ways of strengthening cooperation at the economic and trade levels.

Sisi started his official visit by a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, where they discussed the eastern Mediterranean, Libya, Syria, cultural understanding and respect between Europe and the Islamic world.