\nCAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said Tuesday he is confident Russia will resume direct flights to Egyptian resorts as he discussed ways to bolster ties with Russian officials and lawmakers.<\/p>\n
Addressing the Russian parliament\u2019s upper house, El-Sisi said: \u201cOur efforts to resume direct flights between Cairo and Moscow ended in success after the visit by President Putin to Egypt in December 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am confident that given the positive spirit between the two countries, direct flights to other Egyptian cities will resume,\u201d the Egyptian president said, emphasizing that restoring the flights was essential for Egypt\u2019s tourism industry.<\/p>\n
The highest number of tourists to Egypt annually used to come from Russia before Moscow suspended flights after a bomb planted by the Daesh group brought a Russian passenger plane down over Sinai in October 2015, killing all 224 people on board.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, flights between Moscow and Cairo resumed in April after Egyptian officials beefed up airport security.<\/p>\n
El-Sisi also hailed Egypt\u2019s diplomatic relations with Russia, which have enjoyed a course of 75 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia was the first to help Egypt restore its occupied territories. Egypt also won\u2019t forget Russia\u2019s contribution in its battle for development, as it helped [Egypt] build the high dam and other megaprojects,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
El-Sisi attended meetings in Moscow with top Russian lawmakers and Cabinet ministers, he then met over dinner with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi later in the day.<\/p>\n
The two leaders have developed a close personal rapport and sought to expand bilateral ties, which have strengthened considerably over the past few years.<\/p>\n
El-Sisi is on his fourth trip to Russia since taking office in 2014, and Putin visited Egypt in 2015 and 2017.<\/p>\n
Egypt has signed deals to buy billions of dollars\u2019 worth of Russian weapons, including fighter jets and assault helicopters. When Putin visited Cairo last December, officials signed a deal for Russia to build a nuclear power plant in Dabaa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
El-Sisi confident Russian flights will resume \u2018soon\u2019 to Egyptian resort cities CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said Tuesday he is confident Russia will resume direct flights to Egyptian resorts as he discussed ways to bolster ties with Russian officials and lawmakers. Addressing the Russian parliament\u2019s upper house, El-Sisi said: \u201cOur efforts to resume direct flights…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}