Official website of the President of Russia

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Dear Mr President!

Dear friends!

Allow me to welcome you once again to Moscow. Mr President and I had the opportunity to discuss various aspects of our cooperation and the most sensitive problems on the international agenda in much detail.

Along with this Egypt represents a huge interest for Russia and is one of our foreign policy priorities. Egypt remains one of our main partners in the Arab and the Islamic world. And now, in Russia, we have the opportunity to concentrate on our bilateral relations and touch on some of the international community’s problems.

President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak: I wish to thank Mr President for the warm meeting.

My delegation and I aspire to strengthening our bilateral relations in every possible way, especially in the economic sphere since this sphere is extremely important. This morning I met with Russian businessmen. We discussed a great many issues with respect to our bilateral cooperation. We are going to grant them a free economic zone where they can work in preferential conditions. The very widest range of industries can develop in this zone, including pharmaceuticals, oil, gas and other sectors.

I already spoke with Mr President about the fact that today our cooperation has reached a peak and is very active. At the same time, the history of our cooperation runs very deep. We have had ties in the widest range of fields since 1955, the time of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

I think that we can now turn to seriously stimulating our cooperation, finding new opportunities for increasing the trade between our countries, and establishing various joint projects.