London: Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi met with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday during a three-day visit aimed at boosting relations to a new partnership level based on promoting stability and development in Egypt and the Middle East. He hopes to advance political, economic and security cooperation and is especially timely in light of a suspected bomb attack on a Russian airliner last week that killed 224 in the Sinai Peninsula.
He will also meet with Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon to discuss military and security cooperation and mutual coordination efforts to address terrorist threats, according to the Middle East News Agency (MENA).
Al Sissi was also to meet with representatives of a number of major British companies as well as the British business community to outline promising investment opportunities in Egypt.
He will discuss ways to enhance economic cooperation in the fields of energy, transportation and infrastructure, as they pertain to the national projects that Egypt is implementing. This is in addition to increasing British investments, given that Britain is the largest foreign investor in Egypt with investments that exceed $20 billion.
Al Sissi was to also meet with a number of British intellectuals to present Egypt’s view of the democratic and economic transitions, and ways to address crises in the Middle East.
Britain said on Thursday there was a significant possibility that Daesh’s Egyptian affiliate was behind the plane crash tragedy. Russia dismissed the claim as speculation and Egypt said there was no indication so far that a bomb was to blame.
The topic is sensitive for Russia, whose warplanes have launched raids against Daesh in Syria, and for Egypt, which depends heavily on revenues from tourism.
“We’ve looked at the whole information picture and concluded that there is a significant possibility,” Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said on Sky television.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said it was more likely than not that a bomb was to blame.
“We cannot be certain that the Russian airliner was brought down by a terrorist bomb, but it looks increasingly likely that that was the case,” Cameron said.
US and European security sources say evidence now suggests that a bomb planted by Daesh’s Egypt affiliate - Sinai Province - was the likely cause of the crash.
Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands banned flights to and from Sharm Al Shaikh, where the doomed flight originated, while Germany urged travellers to avoid the Sinai Peninsula.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said Russian planes were still flying to and from Sharm Al Shaikh.
Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, launched air raids against opposition groups in Syria including Daesh on Sept. 30.
Daesh has called for war against both Russia and the United States in response to their air strikes in Syria.
Meanwhile, the Russian foreign ministry complained about Britain’s failure to hand over information about the crash.
“If they have information and they are not presenting it that is shocking,” Maria Zakharova, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said, noting that it was surprising that the representative of a foreign government rather than experts were putting forward theories about the plane’s fate.
“The realisation that the British government has some kind of information that could shed light on what happened in the skies above Egypt is truly shocking,” RIA Novosti, another Russian agency, cited her as saying.
