Egypt's President Gives Highest Honor to Visiting Indian Prime Minister as Ties Improve

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Ittihadiya presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt June 25, 2023. The Egyptian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Ittihadiya presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt June 25, 2023. The Egyptian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
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Egypt's President Gives Highest Honor to Visiting Indian Prime Minister as Ties Improve

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Ittihadiya presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt June 25, 2023. The Egyptian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Ittihadiya presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt June 25, 2023. The Egyptian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi on Sunday bestowed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Egypt’s highest honor as the two countries tightened their partnership.

Al-Sisi welcomed Modi at the presidential palace in Cairo with the Order of the Nile, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement. The leaders signed a declaration elevating Egyptian-Indo ties to a “strategic partnership,” which means the two nations agreed to intensify their cooperation and hold periodic talks, the statement said.

Egypt and India share deep ties that date back to the 1950s, when they played key roles in founding the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought an alternative path at the height of the Cold War.

Modi, who arrived in Cairo on Saturday, is the first Indian prime minister to pay a state visit to Egypt in more than two decades. His two-day stop came six months after Al-Sisi was in New Delhi as an official guest at India’s Republic Day parade.

Modi also invited the Egyptian leader to attend a summit of the Group of 20 leading rich and developing countries, which India will host in September.

Following his talks with Al-Sisi, Modi visited the famed Pyramids of Giza and a historic mosque, Cairo's Al-Hakim, which was recently renovated with the help of the India-based Dawoodi Bohra community. He also paid tribute to Indian soldiers who died in World War I and are buried in the Heliopolis War Cemetery in Cairo.

Modi’s trip to Egypt has focused on strengthening bilateral ties. The prime minister said both countries have been moving swiftly to increase bilateral trade to $12 billion annually within five years.

Trade exchange between the two nations reached $6 billion in last year, a 13.7% increase from $5.3 billion in 2021, according to Egypt's statistics bureau.

The two governments also signed agreements in the fields of agriculture, archaeology, antiquities and competition law, said Arindam Bagchi, a spokesman for India’s external affairs ministry.

“My visit to Egypt was a historic one. It will add renewed vigor to India-Egypt relations and will benefit the people of our nations,” Modi wrote on Twitter before departing to New Delhi.

Earlier this year, both countries agreed to boost trade cooperation. India, the world’s most populous country, is one of the top five importers of Egyptian products, including crude oil and liquefied natural gas, salt, cotton, inorganic chemicals and oilseeds. Major Indian exports to Egypt include cotton yarn, coffee, herbs, tobacco, lentils, vehicle parts, ships, boats and electrical machinery.

Al-Sisi and Modi, who came to power in their countries in 2014, have in recent years cultivated a closer relationship. Over the last 16 months, they have resisted pressure from the West to condemn the Russian war in Ukraine. Both Egypt and India have decades-old ties with the Kremlin.

“There is a change in the global geopolitical and geoeconomic atmosphere wherein both countries wish to play a defining role,” India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said during a visit to Cairo in September. “Egypt’s geostrategic location acts as a connecting link between Africa, West Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe and is also an important country from the Indo-Pacific point of view.”

Modi arrived from the United States, where he held talks with President Joe Biden and top administration officials, addressed Congress and met with top American executives.

His meeting with al-Sisi came as global attention focused on a brief rebellion by the head of the Wagner Group, seen as the greatest challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power. Neither leader commented on the Russian crisis.



No Breakthrough in Gaza Talks, Egyptian and Palestinian Sources Say

 Palestinians carry a casualty removed from under the rubble at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip April 13, 2025. (Reuters)
Palestinians carry a casualty removed from under the rubble at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip April 13, 2025. (Reuters)
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No Breakthrough in Gaza Talks, Egyptian and Palestinian Sources Say

 Palestinians carry a casualty removed from under the rubble at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip April 13, 2025. (Reuters)
Palestinians carry a casualty removed from under the rubble at the site of an Israeli strike on a house, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip April 13, 2025. (Reuters)

The latest round of talks in Cairo to restore the defunct Gaza ceasefire and free Israeli hostages ended with no apparent breakthrough, Palestinian and Egyptian sources said on Monday.

The sources said Hamas had stuck to its position that any agreement must lead to an end to the war in Gaza.

Israel, which restarted its military campaign in Gaza last month after a ceasefire agreed in January unraveled, has said it will not end the war until Hamas is stamped out. The group has ruled out any proposal that it lay down its arms.

But despite that fundamental disagreement, the sources said a Hamas delegation led by the group's Gaza Chief Khalil Al-Hayya had shown some flexibility over how many hostages it could free in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel should a truce be extended.

An Egyptian source told Reuters the latest proposal to extend the truce would see Hamas free an increased number of hostages. Israeli minister Zeev Elkin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet, told Army Radio on Monday that Israel was seeking the release of around 10 hostages, raised from previous Hamas consent to free five.

Hamas has asked for more time to respond to the latest proposal, the Egyptian source said.

"Hamas has no problem, but it wants guarantees Israel agrees to begin the talks on the second phase of the ceasefire agreement" leading to an end to the war, the Egyptian source said.

AIRSTRIKES

Hamas freed 33 Israeli hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees during the six-week first phase of the ceasefire which began in January. But the second phase, which was meant to begin at the start of March and lead to the end of the war, was never launched.

Since restarting their military campaign last month, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,500 Palestinians, many of them civilians, and uprooted hundreds of thousands, seizing swathes of territory and imposing a total blockade on all supplies to the entire enclave.

Meanwhile, 59 Israeli hostages remain in the hands of Hamas. Israel believes up to 24 of them are alive.

Palestinians say the wave of Israeli attacks since the collapse of the ceasefire has been among the deadliest and most intense of the war, hitting an exhausted population surviving in the enclave's ruins.

In Jabalia, a community on Gaza's northern edge, rescue workers in orange vests were trying to smash through concrete with a sledgehammer to recover bodies buried underneath a building that collapsed in an Israeli strike.

Feet and a hand of one person could be seen under a concrete slab. Men carried a body wrapped in a blanket. Workers at the scene said as many as 25 people had been killed.

The Israeli military said it had struck there against fighters planning an ambush.

In Khan Younis in the south, a camp of makeshift tents had been shredded into piles of debris by an airstrike. Families had returned to poke through the rubbish in search of belongings.

"We used to live in houses. They were destroyed. Now, our tents have been destroyed too. We don't know where to stay," said Ismail al-Raqab, who returned to the area after his family fled the raid before dawn.

EGYPT'S SISI MEETS QATARI EMIR

The leaders of the two Arab countries that have led the ceasefire mediation efforts, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, met in Doha on Sunday. The Egyptian source said Sisi had called for additional international guarantees for a truce agreement, beyond those provided by Egypt and Qatar themselves.

US President Donald Trump, who has backed Israel's decision to resume its campaign and called for the Palestinian population of Gaza to leave the territory, said last week that progress was being made in returning the hostages.

The war was triggered by Hamas' October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, more than 50,900 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, according to local health authorities.