Telegraph - Donald
Trump will host Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the White
House today for their first face-to-face meeting since Mr Trump took
office. Here’s what you need to know.
Sisi is coming in from the cold
Mr Sisi is a former army general who overthrew the
democratically-elected president of Egypt in 2013 and was then elected
president himself a year later. While Barack Obama never outright
accused Mr Sisi of carrying out a coup, he clearly did not trust the
Egyptian strongman and pointedly never invited him to the White House.
So for Mr Sisi, today’s meeting
marks an end to his time as a pariah in Obama’s Washington and the
beginning of what he hopes will be a warmer relationship with the Trump
administration.
The meeting is important for Mr Sisi’s domestic politics and will
allow him to present himself to the Egyptian people as an international
statesman, even as the country struggles with a weak economy and
deteriorating security situation.
Less emphasis on human rights
The Obama administration was
critical of Mr Sisi’s bloody crackdown on Egyptian Islamists and
dissidents but the Trump White House has made clear it sees human rights
as less of an issue and is much more focused on working together on
counter-terrorism and the fight against Islamic State (Isil).
A White House official said that Mr Trump planned not to criticise
Egypt in public but would air concerns "in a private, more discreet
way”.
A bipartisan group of US senators has urged Mr Trump to push his
Egyptian counterpart on human rights issues, including the imprisonment
of an Egyptian-American woman.
Military and economic aid
Egypt is the second largest
beneficiary of US military aid after Israel and receives around $1.3
billion a year from the US. Mr Sisi is likely to argue that his country
needs the money to face the threat of an Isil insurgency boiling in the
Sinai and may push for more.
The US also grants about $250 million a year to Egypt in economic
aid. The Egyptian economy is in bad shape and struggling with a weak
currency that is driving up prices for Egyptians and generally
destabilising the Arab world’s most populous country.
Mutual admiration
International relations aside, Mr Trump and Mr Sisi seem to admire each other personally.
Mr Sisi was among the first to call Mr Trump to congratulate him on
his election victory and the two men met in September before Mr Trump
was elected. After the meeting, Mr Trump said the Egyptian president was
"a fantastic guy, he took control of Egypt, he really took control of
it” while Mr Sisi praised him as a "strong leader”.
Egyptian media has been full of stories, likely exaggerated, about
the close personal bond between the two men but it seems they do share
chemistry and common approaches.
The Muslim Brotherhood
Mr Sisi
is a sworn enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood and outlawed the organisation
in Egypt not long after he toppled the Brotherhood’s
democratically-elected president Mohammed Morsi. Thousands of
Brotherhood supporters have been killed or imprisoned since he took
power.
Mr Trump has flirted with the idea of designating the Muslim
Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation and that would be sure to please
Mr Sisi. But there is a lot of resistance to the move from American
diplomats and military leaders, who say it could potentially inflame
relations with Turkey and other Islamist governments.
