Egypt President Calls for Renewed Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, Broader

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Sunday Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s call “to expand peace with Israel” to encompass more Arab countries, said Netanyahu’s spokesman.

The Associated Press had also reported that Sisi said that resolving the Palestinian question could “change the face of the region and… bring about enormous improvement to the situation”.

He ended with an optimistic message for the future of Egypt: “I am confident that with God’s help, the Egyptian people will be able to achieve their highest aspiration for themselves, their country, their region, and the whole world”.

This is the second time Sisi attends the UN General Assembly meetings since his election in June 2014.

Last week, the Egyptian leader pardoned 100 prisoners, including three Al Jazeera journalists who had been slapped with jail terms earlier this month for “spreading false news”.

“Rest assured that we are always keen on sorting out issues and problems, especially those that relate to journalists and to the media personnel”, he added.

In the newspaper piece, el-Sissi said his government is aiming for a 5 percent growth during the current fiscal year, “driven by rising foreign direct investment, and the implementation of various new energy, infrastructure and agricultural reclamation projects”. There is an increase in the extremist groups. There is the problem of the refugees that are flowing into Europe. Ties are “strategic and stable”, he said.

Since the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in 2013, Brotherhood supporters have launched weekly protests in Egypt, which led to the arrests and killings of thousands of them.

In the first assembly, organised by the Egyptian community in New York, protestors held signs reading slogans such as “long live Al-Sisi” and played songs supporting the military and Egypt.

Egypt has agreed to buy two assault ships from France, the French government said Wednesday, dramatically increasing its capabilities on- and off-shore as the country tries to assume a more prominent role against Islamic…

Sisi also called for empowering the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination and to an independent state within the borders existing before the 1967 six-day war with East Jerusalem as its capital.