President Al-Sisi
Osman Mirghani – Khartoum
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi visited Sudan on Saturday for the first time since the victory of the Sudanese revolution.
In the joint press conference held by President Al-Sisi and the President of the Transitional Sovereign Council, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, it was apparent that the axis of the joint concerns is the dossier of the water and GERD negotiations in particular.
Both leaders discussed ways to strengthen bilateral relations at all levels, as well as several regional and international issues of common interest.
Issues in particular concerned with developments in the situation in the Sudanese-Ethiopian border region, and the recent Sudanese moves to extend state sovereignty over its eastern borders with Ethiopia.
On the other hand, the Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces concluded a two-day visit to Khartoum, during which an agreement was signed for cooperation in the fields of military training and coordination; a matter that remind us of military coordination between the two countries in the earlier days of the eighties of last century, when the military coordination reached the stage of signing a joint defense agreement between the two countries.
Despite the fact that Ethiopia is looking suspiciously at what is going between the two banks of River Nile, especially after the recent military border-tension with Sudan, still the level of the relations between Sudan and Egypt requires more bilateral efforts to achieve the aspirations of the two countries.
The bilateral relations between Sudan and Egypt should move forward to strategic zone that oversteps the emergency situations, and this could be achieved only through upgrading and widening the joint interests popularly and officially.
We believe that now is the best timing for qualitative change in the course of the relations between the two countries through bold and serious dialogue that removes all the historic complications.
We propose as a start for such dialogue to organize an open academic forum led by the University of Khartoum and the University of Egypt to arrange for designing a strategic track.
