Tag: diplomacy
New US arms export to Cairo
The US government has awarded the Virginia-based Regulus Global LLC a US$10,830,090 contract, to supply the Egyptian Special Forces with
Army/Navy Portable Visual Search-21 Low Profile Night Vision Goggle Kits, Clip on Thermal Modules, Micro Combat Identification Beacons, and Airfield Multi-Spectral Beacon System Lighting System Kits.
Sisi resists US calls to arm Ukraine
It is interesting to see how will this play out in the near future, since Sisi’s regime has close ties with both sides.
After Egypt agreed it wouldn’t send weapons to Russia, it is now resisting requests from senior U.S. leaders to send them to Ukraine, Egyptian and American officials say, posing an obstacle for the Biden administration’s push to generate arms for a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
WSJ
Egypt initially planned to send rockets to Russia but dropped that plan under pressure from the U.S. earlier this year, the officials say. U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, asked Egypt to supply weapons to Ukraine instead, seeking to help the Ukrainian government overcome a shortage of ammunition.
Austin made the request in March when the secretary of defense met Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, in Cairo. Egypt’s leaders were noncommittal at the time, and senior U.S. officials have raised the request in multiple encounters since then, the officials said.
The U.S. asked Egypt to supply artillery shells, antitank missiles, air-defense systems and small arms for Ukraine, according to a U.S. official. In conversations with U.S. officials, Egypt hasn’t definitively rejected the requests, but Egyptian officials said privately that Egypt has no plans to send the weapons.