Starović: Al-Sisi's visit rekindles an old friendship

In an interview for Tajnug Starović explained that the very fact that the President of Egypt had stayed in our capital for almost four days was an expression of great respect and friendly relationship by both Egypt and Egyptian people towards Serbia.

He further explained that the old friendship was reflected in the fact that between 1955 and 1987, that is, over the course of 32 years, as many as 31 presidential return visits had been made either by Josip Broz Tito to Cairo, or by Presidents Nasser, Sadat or Mubarak to our capital.

Starović pointed out that Egypt was in the limelight and pointed out that the world powers were vying for Egypt's favour as evidenced by al-Sisi's meeting with US President Joseph Biden less than a week before, the meeting in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the fact that he was extending his tour directly from Belgrade to Paris, where he would be talking with President Emmanuel Macron.

He called attention to the importance of Egypt today in international relations underpinned by the fact that the construction of the first nuclear power plant in Egypt was underway in cooperation with the Russian Federation.

"All this speaks about the importance of Egypt today, as well as about a strong economic momentum that the Egyptian state is going through. Let us look back on 5,000 kilometres of highways, a high-speed railway, the construction of a completely new city as the administrative capital located 40 kilometres east of Cairo in which life for more than four million people has been envisaged. This all speaks in favour of how important Egypt is as a historical central country of the Arab world, as a country with a population of 105 million people, whose birth rate rises by two million people every year, for which reason it is of strategic importance to us to renew historical friendly ties and use them as a foundation for our, first of all, economic, but also political cooperation," Starović pointed out.

In this context, the Declaration on Strategic Partnership signed yesterday by two presidents - President al-Sisi and President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić, represents an umbrella document from which all agreements and memoranda derive, and therefore enable cooperation between our two countries across numerous fields, he further explained.

Starović highlights agriculture, defence industry, joint investments, ecology, and high technologies as areas of cooperation.

He believes that the list of areas in which cooperation is possible is boundless and that as such it reflects the enormous potential that exists in our cooperation.

Recalling an important Egyptian-Serbian business forum held yesterday, Starović said that in addition to trade arrangements that had already been intensified since the beginning of this year, actual agreements had been reached, and as such include joint investments by both our and Egyptian companies.

"I think this is the right way to create an additional value together and the way we can act jointly in third markets," Starović said.