Cairo (AP) – Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Cairo on Monday for the first leg of his upcoming Middle East tour ahead of US President Joe Biden’s visit to the region next month.
According to the Egyptian presidency, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah received bin Salman at the El-Sisi airport in courtesy of the de facto leader who has been a consistent financial supporter of the Egyptian government.
The two leaders will hold talks at the Presidential Palace in Cairo on Tuesday. The Saudi Crown Prince, usually referred to by his initials MBS, then travels to Jordan for talks with King Abdullah II, a close ally of Saudi Arabia.
Bin Salman will travel to Turkey to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is visiting Saudi Arabia in April for the first time in five years as relations between the two countries improve.. Saudi-Turkish relations have soured since the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the Saudi Istanbul Consulate.
The princely talks in Cairo and Amman aimed to coordinate their positions on key issues, Saudi officials told the Associated Press last week that a joint summit with President Joe Biden would be held in Jeddah next month. The summit will be attended by the Prime Minister of Iraq and other Gulf leaders. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the visit.
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Biden is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia at the end of his July 13-16 tour of the East, which includes stops in Israel and the occupied West Bank. He will hold talks with the prince as part of an effort to restore US-Saudi relations. The administration could use assistance from the oil-rich kingdom to reduce rising prices at the pump for motorists at home and around the world.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia are one of the most populous countries in the Arab world. El-Sissy, the Islamist president-elect who was elected Minister of Defense in 2013, tightened their long-standing alliance after leading a military coup amid popular protests against his divided one-year rule. Since then, Riyadh has provided tens of billions of dollars in aid and investment to help revitalize the Egyptian economy.
Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates pledged a total of $ 22 billion in deposits and direct investment in Egypt in an effort to stabilize the economy that was damaged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The war in Europe shook the world economy and caused oil prices to rise, the tides of which were felt in countries around the world.