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Assad’s Envoy in Cairo, Egyptian Authorities Stay Quite about Visit | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi addresses the 69th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, September 24, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Segar


Cairo – The Egyptian government remained quite on Monday after Syria’s government-affiliated news agency SANA reported that Chief of Bashar Assad’s National Security Bureau Major General Ali al-Mamlouk has paid an official visit to Egypt upon an invitation from Cairo.

One Egyptian official told Asharq Al-Awsat that circulating such news was an attempt to create a dispute between Egypt and the Gulf states.

However, all other channels with whom Asharq Al-Awsat spoke with, about the visit, kept quite by refusing to answer any inquiries concerning al-Mamlouk’s meetings in Cairo.

On Monday, SANA had wrote that al-Mamlouk paid a one-day visit to Cairo, where he met with Maj. Gen. Khaled Fawzi, Deputy Chief of the National Security Agency in Egypt, and senior security officials.

SANA also said the two sides agreed on coordinating stances politically between Syria and Egypt, in addition to boosting coordination for combating terrorism hitting both countries.

The Syrian news agency did not specify when exactly al-Mamlouk had visited Egypt.

Agency France Presse said the visit was the first of a Syrian security official made public since the start of the war five years ago.

A Syrian source who had attended the visit said: “This is not al-Mamlouk’s first visit to Cairo this year but the first to be made public.”

Last week, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said: “We have independent policies towards Syria.”

El-Sisi said that Egypt voted in favor of the French and Russian draft resolutions on Syria at the U.N. Security Council because both resolutions called for a truce and aid for Syrians.

“I cannot imagine that our bothers in the Gulf object to that,” el-Sisi added.

Al-Mamlouk was appointed chief of the Syrian National Security Bureau in 2012. He currently supervises all Syrian security apparatuses. Al-Mamlouk’s name is one of several Syrian names listed by imposed E.U. sanctions.