With national security again a major USA election issue after bombings in NY and New Jersey, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump sought to burnish their foreign-policy credentials on Monday by meeting world leaders at the United Nations.
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Top advisers Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn joined Trump for the bilateral meeting.
El-Sissi was suggesting that the world was suffering from a crisis of extremist ideology, according to a later translation.
And once again, he was dogged by critics – although, to be fair, so was his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton – for her own meeting with the Egyptian strongman, on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly in NY.
She spent more than an hour locked in private discussions with the Egyptian leader, with aides later saying they had discussed issues ranging from counter-terrorism to human rights. Another lawmaker, Tareq Radwan, said they would support the president as a “symbol of Egypt”.
To this end, Burnett inquired Wednesday as to whether Trump’s oft-outrageous rhetoric should be seen as simply a stump talking point.
The sitdown focused on political, military and economic cooperation between the United States and Egypt, according to a statement on the meeting released by his campaign.
Clinton called that episode an “embarrassing global incident”. Clinton’s campaign and other Democrats have accused Trump of cozying up to Putin, who has built his foreign policy on thwarting U.S. goals and failing to confront Moscow over its annexation of Crimea in Ukraine.
Clinton also used the meeting to call for the release of United States citizen Aya Hijazi, who has been imprisoned in Egypt since 2014 after operating a non-profit in the country. A foreign policy advisor to Trump, Walid Phares, told Reuters on Sunday that Trump would also have talks with Sisi on the same day.
“The increased pressure on independent Egyptian civil society, in particular human rights organisations and defenders, is not in line with Egypt’s commitments to promote and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms as guaranteed by its Constitution”, the EEAS said. Morsi was elected president after protests ousted longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, but he is now in prison under a death sentence imposed in May 2015.
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Forty-three Egyptian and foreign NGO staff were subsequently placed on trial and handed jail terms of up to five years in 2013 for working illegally.Most of the foreigners were tried in absentia. Al-Ahram claims to have obtained documents detailing several internal and external plots against Sisi that aim to alter Egyptian public opinion in a way against his leadership. CNN reported she was also scheduled to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “There can be a solution with the Palestinians by establishing a Palestinian state next to Israel that will preserve peace and security for both the nations”.
