Riyadh: Few details have emerged from the late-night meeting at the palace of King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. State media from both countries said the talks included Egyptian efforts to broker a ceasefire in a month-long fighting between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Saudi and Egyptian media made no reference to fresh financial aid or to the planned donor conference.
But state news agency WAM of the United Arab Emirates reported that UAE Foreign Minister Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan flew to Saudi Arabia on Sunday night for talks with his Saudi counterpart at the airport in Jeddah. It gave no further details.
King Abdullah made a brief visit to Egypt in June while flying back home from Morocco in a move that underscored the strong support he showed to Egypt’s new president.
Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi of Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah met in Riyadh on Sunday. Both leaders are enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood and they also see the recent success of militants in Iraq as a threat to their stability and undermining security in the region. Al Sissi’s spokesman, Ehab Badawi, said the two leaders agreed to work together to promote the “true and moderate values of Islam that reject extremism and terrorism”.
“President Al Sissi and King Abdullah also reviewed the development of the situation in Iraq in light of the expanding of the circle of terrorism in the region,” Badawi said, according to Egypt’s Middle East news agency.
“There is no doubt that the meeting between the leadership of the two countries is important in light of the current circumstance of the Arab and Muslim nation,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal said, according to state news agency SPA.
“[There are] external wars, intervention from foreign powers, internal sedition and disputes within the Arab nation at a time when it is in utmost need for solidarity and to stand together as one man to repel the enmities,” he said.
The visit is Al Sissi’s first since his election to the presidency this year. The pair met on King Abdullah’s plane in Cairo in June, and Riyadh regards the former Egyptian army leader as one of its closest regional allies.
Saudi Arabia, along with Gulf Arab allies Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, have provided some $20 billion (Dh73.46 billion) in aid after Al Sissi ousted Islamist President Mohammad Mursi last year following mass protests against his one year in office.
King Abdullah has also called for a donor conference for Egypt expected to take place either this year or early next year to provide further support to the most populous country in the Arab world.
Egypt has suffered a string of attacks by militants angry over the army’s ouster of Mursi and the crackdown on Islamists in the country.
US-allied Saudi Arabia is also worried by the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) while at the same time it is unhappy with the policies of the government of Nouri Al Maliki which it sees as being too close to arch-rival Iran.
