Egypt s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi left Cairo for Paris on Monday for a three-day state visit to France, including his first meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, state-run news agency MENA reported.
El-Sisi and Macron are expected to hold a summit on Tuesday for discussions on bilateral cooperation in the fields of politics, economics and military matters.
The two presidents are also set to discuss issues of mutual interest, including Middle East regional affairs and counter-terrorism.
El-Sisi s visit to France is the third since he took office in 2014, but the first since Macron was elected as a president in May this year.
The visit was announced in September by France s ambassador to Cairo, who said that El-Sisi would visit fly to Paris this autumn at the invitation of Macron.
In early October, plans for the visit were discussed by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, who met in Paris.
According to an Egyptian foreign ministry statement at the time, the two ministers discussed ongoing cooperation between the nations, as well as regional issues, such as the conflicts in Syria and Libya.
Regarding the Israel-Palestine issue, Le Drian "praised the Egyptian role in broaching a reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas," the ministry statement said.
Egypt has made several purchases of French military hardware in recent years, the most recent of which is a Gowind 2500 corvette, which arrived in Alexandria earlier this month. The naval vessel is one of four such models to provided to Egypt according to a deal signed in 2014.
