Putin on the Nile: an Isolated Russia Seeks friends in Egypt w/ offer of Nuclear Plant

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2015/02/isolated-friends-nuclear.html

Putin on the Nile: an Isolated Russia Seeks friends in Egypt w/ offer of Nuclear Plant
By Juan Cole | Feb. 11, 2015

President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation paid a state visit to Cairo on Tuesday, consulting with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on a range of economic and foreign policy issues. The meeting was seen by many observers as underlining the desire of Egypt to become less dependent on the United States, and the desire of Russia to find new friends at a time its Ukraine policy has made it a pariah in Europe.

Al-Sisi told the Russian press that in the immediate aftermath of the July 3, 2013 ‘revolution’ Egypt wanted to develop its foreign policy. Among the bilateral issues al-Sisi raised with the Russians were these:

He got an agreement with the Russians whereby they will build a nuclear reactor in Dabaa in the northwest of the country. Egypt does not have much in the way of coal, trees or natural gas. In fact, solar energy makes more sense for Egypt than does nuclear, but apparently it is having trouble raising international funding for solar panels.

On Syria, al-Sisi warned of the dangers of Muslim radicalism. His fear of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the radical Muslim groups in Syria has led him to a de facto complaisance toward the Bashar al-Assadi regime, which aligns him more or less with Putin on this issue. When I was in Egypt last year, I read with astonishment a column in an Egyptian newspaper by a disciple of the president of Baathist Syria, Bashar al-Assad, which argued that authoritarian government could be successful.