President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi exchanged greetings on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha with Qatar’s Emir Tameem bin Hamad bin Khalifa during a phone call on Sunday.
Both leaders expressed their desire for greater regional stability and progress.
This is considered a turning point in Egyptian-Qatari relations after the years of tension that followed the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in 2013. Qatar has maintained its support for the Brotherhood regime.
When former president Mohamed Morsi was sentenced in mid-June to life in prison and 15 additional years in jail on charges of espionage, accused of sending national security information to Qatar, the Qatari foreign ministry condemned the ruling for “mentioning its name in the Egyptian court verdict”.
Ahmed El Rumaihi, the director of the information centre in the Qatari foreign affairs ministry, said in a statement that “though it is not final, the verdict is unfounded, goes against truth, and contains misleading claims that are contrary to the policy of the state of Qatar towards all sister countries, including Egypt”.
In response, the spokesperson of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Abou Zeid, said that “such a statement is not surprising coming from those who have used its media outlets in a hostile way against the Egyptian people and its state”.
