CAIRO: The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz will visit Egypt today for the first time since the 2011 uprising, in a show of support for newly-elected President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, Egyptian officials said yesterday.
The officials said Al Sisi will receive the ailing monarch upon his arrival from Morocco, where he spent time for medical rehabilitation. The visit will be Abdullah’s first since the 2011 ouster of Hosni Mubarak, a close ally of both Saudi Arabia and the United States. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations showered Egypt with billions of dollars in aid after Al Sisi, then the army’s top general, overthrew Islamist President Mohammed Mursi amid massive protests last summer. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have both declared the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Mursi hails, a terrorist organisation.
The first world leader to congratulate Al Sisi after winning last month’s election was King Abdullah, who has been on the throne for nearly a decade and is almost 90. The monarch declared that the turmoil sparked by the Arab Spring should now come to a close.
“The brotherly Egyptian people have suffered during the past period of chaos. The short-sighted called it ‘creative chaos,’” the king said in a letter published by the Saudi state news agency.
He called for a donors conference to help Egypt “get out of the tunnel,” referring to its wrecked economy.
AP
