Foreign ministers from Egypt and Algeria meet in Cairo to discuss the Tunisia crisis

Last updated on September 11th, 2021 at 07:56 am

Sameh Shukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, met with Ramtane Lamamra, Algeria‘s foreign minister, in Cairo on Saturday. Shukry told reporters at a joint press conference that Egypt is closely monitoring the political unrest in Tunisia following the president’s move to acquire extraordinary powers.

President Kais Saied suspended parliament, lifted parliament members’ immunity, sacked the prime minister, and assumed control of the executive branch, arguing the necessity to preserve the country in the face of popular outrage over unemployment, rising costs, and one of Africa’s worst coronavirus epidemics.

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Autocratic authorities from Egypt to Saudi Arabia think the power grab bodes death for the region’s Islamists, but they also dread a repeat of the Arab Spring that Tunisia sparked a decade ago. Egypt “fully trusts” Tunisia’s leadership, according to Shukry, but it is an “internal matter.”

Meanwhile, Lamamra stated that the conflict over the Nile project between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt is “at a crucial stage.” He pushed the three countries to reach an accord.

Egypt claims that a decade of negotiations over the Blue Nile hydroelectric plant have failed to ensure that sufficient volumes of water will continue to flow downstream to Sudan and Egypt, where the river is the only supply of water for 100 million people.