Security of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea connects Egypt with India and the Indian Ocean, Egypt’s Ambassador to India said on January 16, 2023, laying out the new strategic partnership emerging between the two sides.
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Speaking at an event organised by the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) to discuss bilateral relations in the context of the upcoming visit of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, Ambassador Wael Mohamed Awad Hamed said the invitation to President El Sisi for the Republic Day celebration is a “truly historic moment” as not even President Gamal Abdel Nasser was invited to India’s Republic Day during the “hey day” of India-Egypt friendship in the 1950s-’60s, he said. Mr. Hamed also appreciated New Delhi for what he described as India’s “independent” position on the Ukraine crisis.
“We are starting a new strategic partnership, which is first of all based on the defence and security pillar. When we speak about India and its position in the world, we have to remember that India is the major country in the Indian Ocean and the security of the Indian Ocean starts from the Red Sea in the west and for Egypt, security of the Suez Canal begins with the security of the Red Sea. So we are both linked together. So both of them depend on each other for security,” Mr. Hamed said. He welcomed India to take advantage of Egypt’s “geographical location” between Asia and Europe and said his country can provide a “springboard” to Indian companies.
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“The world is seeing radical changes. The world we are living in today is not the world of the 1950s and the 1960s when we were talking about non-alignment. The issues of that time were so much different from what we are speaking of today. We are talking of challenges [today] related to the crisis in Ukraine, challenges regarding food security and energy security. These are all issues that Egypt and India are very much aligned at,” Mr. Hamed said, highlighting the common concerns driving Egyptian and Indian foreign policy priorities.
India’s relation with Egypt has received a boost in the recent months because of enhanced high-level bilateral visits and greater security and defence cooperation. India has invited Egypt to be a “guest country” at the G-20 summit alongside the UAE, Bangladesh, Singapore, Mauritius, Nigeria, Oman, Spain and The Netherlands. From the Indian side, both Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar visited Cairo in September and October 2022, respectively.
Egypt’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Amr Talaat, visited India last week and interacted with major IT companies in Bengaluru. The government of President El Sisi has a ‘Digital Egypt’ vision like that of ‘Digital India’, and the Minister discussed opportunities with major companies like Wipro Limited.
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Ambassador Hamed appreciated India’s invitation to Egypt to be a “guest country” at the upcoming G-20 summit that India will host, and said that the coming together of both sides amounts to “two countries coming together to represent the voice of the South”. The envoy made a mention of the expanding defence exchanges between the two sides and said such exchanges are going to be intensified.
“We for the first time ever will hold joint military exercises with special forces participating together from Egypt and India in Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jaipur,” Mr. Hamed said.
The growing defence cooperation between India and Egypt is helped by the fact that both sides operate Rafale fighter jets, and Egypt has requirement of military hardware, some of which India is willing to offer.
He urged both countries to “look into the opportunities that remain untapped”. “Energy security and food security — these are issues that have become more and more important in the light of the Ukraine crisis,” Mr. Hamed said, emphasising that wheat from India and fertilizer from Egypt can “complement each other”.