India invites Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to be Republic Day chief guest

NEW DELHI: India has extended an invite to the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, to be the chief guest at the Republic Day parade on January 26. A chief guest for the parade is likely after two barren years.

Gen El Sisi last visited India in 2016 but there have been several high-level visits. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited Cairo last month and had handed over a “personal message’’ from PM Modi to Gen El-Sisi. This was the first visit to Egypt by an Indian EAM in seven years.

However, this time it was underscored by joint-military exercises leading to top-level political engagement. Meanwhile, in July and August, the Indian Air Force and the Egyptian Air Force conducted various exercises at the Egyptian Fighter Weapons School, near Cairo.

The combination of both air forces is similar, reflective of a significant period of history where both India and Egypt were the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), under the leadership of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Egypt’s second President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Both the IAF and EAF’s fighter fleets comprise a combination of imports, ranging from a variety of suppliers such as Russia, France, the US and the UK among others. From India’s point of view, an outreach to Egypt is part of its larger construct of its security architecture in West Asia, particularly the Gulf, spearheaded by New Delhi’s flourishing relations with the UAE that is arguably the most powerful leader in the region today. Egypt has traditionally been one of India’s most important trading partners in the African continent.

The India-Egypt Bilateral Trade Agreement has been in operation since March 1978 and is based on the Most Favoured Nation mode and the bilateral trade has increased more than five times in last ten years. In 2022, both the countries recorded the highest-ever bilateral trade of $7.26 billion, with items like crude petroleum, fertilizers, bovine meat, cotton yarn, etc. dominating the trade basket.

Indian companies have also invested heavily in Egypt, to the tune of around $3.15 billion. President Sisi is a retired military officer who has served as the sixth and current President of Egypt since 2014. Before retiring as a general in the Egyptian military in 2014, Sisi served as Egypt’s deputy prime minister from 2013 to 2014, as its defence minister from 2012 to 2013, and as its director of military intelligence from 2010 to 2012. He was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal in January 2014.