CAIRO (dpa-AFX) – Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock ends her three-day inaugural trip to the Middle East in Egypt this Saturday. Meetings with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and her colleague Samih Shukri were planned in the capital Cairo. The talks should also deal with Egypt’s controversial desire for arms deliveries in Germany. Baerbock is also likely to address the issue of climate protection, which is important to her. Egypt will host this year’s world climate conference in November.
weapons shipments
The traffic light government wants to curb arms exports in the future, especially to so-called third countries outside the EU and NATO. This would also affect Egypt as the main recipient country of German weapons.
“German arms exports to Egypt and Saudi Arabia should not be allowed given the problematic politics of both countries,” Green politician Omid Nouripour recently told the German Press Agency. The human rights situation in Egypt is disastrous. Under the leadership of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the country persecutes critics with all severity. Human rights activists assess both the situation of freedom of opinion and freedom of the press and the conditions in the prisons as devastating.
“There are over 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt, and a double-digit number of new prisons have been built for them,” says Nouripour. In the Libyan conflict, Egypt repeatedly violated the agreements of the international community – including arms deliveries and military logistics, emphasized the then candidate for the Green Party presidency.
In December, Germany already denounced the conviction of several democracy activists in the North African country. Egypt, in turn, criticized Germany’s “unjustified interference” in its internal affairs.
Egypt has held a top position in German arms export statistics for three years. The previous government made up of the Union and the SPD approved weapons and other armaments worth 4.34 billion euros for Egypt last year alone – more than for any other country. Shortly before the change of government, when the grand coalition was only in office, it also approved arms exports for 4.91 billion euros. Here, too, it was mostly about deliveries to Egypt.
An arms export ban has been in effect for Saudi Arabia since November 2018. The main reason is the participation of the hard-ruled kingdom in the Yemen war. The trigger for the stop was the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate General in Istanbul.
Middle East Peace Process
At a meeting with her Israeli counterpart, Jair Lapid, Baerbock stressed that the Jewish state could count on Germany’s solidarity even under the new federal government. At the beginning of her journey she visited the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. She laid a wreath there to commemorate the six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany.
At the same time, however, she criticized the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “harmful” and incompatible with international law. Baerbock also met President Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Riad Malki in the Palestinian Territories.
With a view to the faltering peace process, she explained that Jordan and Egypt, as direct neighbors and Israel’s oldest peace treaty partners, play a special role. She wants to explore “how we can jointly support further steps towards a peace process”. The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians has been largely idle since 2014. A peaceful solution must be a two-state solution, emphasized the German Foreign Minister.
climate
Climate protection was also a key concern for Baerbock on her trip to the Middle East. To do this, she wanted to explore new forms of cooperation with the countries in the region. Higher temperatures and greater water shortages are to be feared there.
“The establishment of diplomatic relations with Arab states opens up enormous new opportunities in the areas of climate and energy,” said Baerbock about the situation in Israel. Energy and climate issues could ensure stronger, neighborly cooperation.
In the 21st century, climate policy is also geopolitics and as such should now be a systematic part of German foreign policy.
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– 4th paragraph, last sentence: the word “former” added./bk/jku/cir/DP/zb