Eurasia

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri has arrived in Egypt where he is scheduled to meet with President Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi and Prime Minister Sharif Ismail with the view of strengthening ties between the two countries. Hariri will also meet with Pope Tawadros II of the Coptic Church and Grand Imam …

US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’ spoke with Egyptian Minister of Defense General Sedki Sobhy on Tuesday during which Mattis expressed his “commitment to advancing the US-Egyptian defense partnership.”

Tunisia’s Prime Minister Youssef Chahed on Wednesday arrived in Khartoum for an official two-day visit to Sudan during which he is to hold talks with his Sudanese counterpart Bakri Hassan Saleh. Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour said that the two countries’ prime ministers would hold joint talks which “would review …

France’s ambassador to the United Nations warned on Tuesday that drastic cuts to the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo would be tantamount to “playing with fire” as the country faces election turmoil. France has circulated a draft resolution to renew the mandate of the UN peacekeeping …

Dozens of armed factions have battled for control of oil-rich Libya since the 2011 fall of longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi. This week, four days of intense fighting saw pro-unity government armed forces expand their control in the capital Tripoli, where dozens of militias operate. Further east, troops commanded by military …

The United States on Wednesday urged coalition partners to step up efforts to defeat Islamic State militants as top officials from 68 nations gathered to assess the fight to retake Iraq’s second largest city and advance on the extremists’ self-declared Syrian capital. “I recognise there are many pressing challenges in …

Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry welcomed the invitation by his US counterpart Rex Tillerson—during a phone call on Saturday—to participate in a ministerial conference titled “Coalition Against ISIS.” The conference will take place in Washington on 22 March.

As part of the efforts to achieve a political concord in Libya, the Chief of Staff of the armed forces, Mahmoud Hegazy, met on Sunday with UN special envoy to Libya Martin Kobler, who is currently visiting Egypt, the army spokesperson said in a statement on Facebook. The meeting discussed …

Senior army chiefs from the 5+5 Defense Initiative have agreed on the necessity to further enhance cooperation and better share experiences mainly on how to combat terrorism, the French Defense Ministry said on Monday. The 5+5 Defense Initiative includes five Maghreb countries: Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Mauritania, and five …

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned Thursday that the humanitarian situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) continues to deteriorate, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here. With the upsurge in violence and the spread of hot spots since September 2016, more than 100,000 newly …