Egypt News

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak

The Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit stated that the President’s visit to Eastern Europe comes within the framework of Egypt’s keenness on keeping communication with countries of the region which are closely tied to Egypt with historical and friendship cooperation long ago.

The tour will begin by visiting Budapest of Hungary, during which President Mubarak will meet with President Laszlo Solyom, and hold a wide-range consultation round on ways to enhance bilateral relations between the two countries and exchange views on key issues and regional and international issues of common interest.

Both Presidents will also inaugurate the first round of Egyptian Hungarian Business forum within the context of both sides endeavor to reactivate the private sector, businessmen, and chamber of commerce in both countries.

The round aims at contributing in achieving a qualitative step on the cooperation path, broadening the mutual investment, building economic coalitions between Egypt and Hungary, particularly in the fields of mining, food industry, transportation, and information technology.

Mubarak’s visit is a response to the Hungarian President’s official visit to Egypt, in December 2006. President Mubarak will also meet with the Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai.

His Excellency’s next visit will be to the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, wherein he will meet with President Daniel Türk and Prime Minister Borut Pahor.

In this context Foreign Minister pointed out to the importance of the President’s visit to Slovenia, being the first since establishing the diplomatic relations between the two countries, in 1992 and opening a resident embassy of Egypt in Ljubljana in 2007.

Noteworthy, the Slovenian Embassy has been established in Cairo since 1993, the only Slovenian representation in African and Arab region; this reflects its appreciation for Egypt as an active regional and international power.

Meanwhile, Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit outlined that the increasing exchanged visits at all levels during 2008, on top of which was President Mubarak’s visit to Ljubljana, reflects both sides keenness on improving bilateral relations in various fields, such as economic, trade, and investment and exchanging points of view regarding all regional and international political issues of common concern.

The trade volume between Egypt and Slovenia in 2008 reached 55 million dollars, rising about 8 million dollars compared to 2007.

The Egyptian imports from Slovenia are concentrated on paper, wood, Ferrous Products Manufacturers, while the Egyptian exports to Slovenia are centered in agro products, cotton, ceramic and Ferrous Alloys.

The Slovenian side shows interest in enhancing cooperation with Egypt in the field of natural gas as a producing and exporter country of natural gas, within a strategy of variation of its energy import resources.

Egypt's Mubarak will then head to Zagreb in response to the Croatian President’s invitation Stjepan Mesić, being the first visit of an Egyptian leader to Croatia.

The visit aims at enhancing cooperation ties between Egypt and Croatia in various fields and exchanging visions on regional and international issues of common interest.

Aboul Gheit added that the Egyptian exports to Croatia reached about 18 million dollars during 2008, comparing to 6 million dollars in 2004, while the Croatian exports reached 52 million dollars in the same year comparing to 16 million dollars in 2004. The most important Croatian investment in Egypt is focused on oil and natural gas fields.

Mubarak is expected to conclude his European tour by visiting Italy with the relations enjoy unprecedented development in all kinds of cooperation to strengthening the special qualitative step that was inaugurated during the Egyptian Italian summit on June 4th, 2008, and launched the enhanced strategic cooperation, then followed by the real start in Sharm el-Sheikh summit, May 12th, 2009.

Aboul Gheit pointed out that Italy represents the first trade partner to Egypt on the European arena, and the second after the United States in the world.

The trade volume between the two countries mounted to about 5.2 billion Euros during 2008, while Italian investment in Egypt reached 5 billion Euros.

Moreover, the Italian market is considered one of the most significant exporting markets of tourism to Egypt, wherein the number of Italian tourists to Egypt reached 732 thousand tourists in 2008.

The discussions between the two sides are also decided to tackle the Union for the Mediterranean dossier, currently co-chaired by Egypt and France, as well as the means of boosting euro-Mediterranean cooperation including the progress in the initiative drafts of achieving welfare to peoples of the region, in addition to the means of pushing peace efforts through the initiative.

EGYPT NEWS

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