Israel’s Netanyahu visits Rwanda on trip to Africa

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to visit Azerbaijan, The Times of Israel reports.

The Israeli premier yesterday issued his honest apology to Nairobians while speaking in State House during a state banquet held in his honor by his host President Uhuru Kenyatta.

The Israeli Prime Minister said he had seen media coverage of how Kenyans were forced to walk to work following closure of many roads in the city for his use.

“I don’t understand. We are driving through Nairobi and there is no traffic problem”.

“I am sorry that of the many pleasurable things that this visit evokes and good things, the things for good, to borrow President Kenyatta’s phrase, there is this inconvenience”.

But he assured that the wait in traffic was worth it following the glad tidings that the visit has brought to Kenyans in the interest of development.

Netanyahu’s final comment was a reference to the fact that no Israeli head of state has visited sub-Saharan Africa since Yitzhak Shamir in 1987.

Israel played a prominent role in assisting newly independent African countries in the 1960s, but those relations crumbled in the 1970s, when Arab countries, promising aid, pressured African nations to limit or cut ties with Israel.

Later on Wednesday Netanyahu and Rwandan President Paul Kagame are to talk about deepening co-operation.

Rwanda is the third stop on Netanyahu’s four-nation tour of Africa.