Egyptian envoy bids farewell to Kagame

After four years serving as Egyptian Ambassador to Rwanda, Khaled Adbel-Salam, yesterday bade farewell to President Paul Kagame at Village Urugwiro.

Thursday, August 28, 2014
Amb. Khaled Adbel-Salam, speaks to the media after bidding farewell to President Kagame yesterday. Courtesy.

After four years serving as Egyptian Ambassador to Rwanda, Khaled Adbel-Salam, yesterday bade farewell to President Paul Kagame at Village Urugwiro.

Speaking to The New Times after meeting the President, Adbel-Salam said during his tenure, relations between Rwanda and Egypt grew tremendously.

"I spoke to the President about our relations with Rwanda. President Kagame also affirmed the importance of Egyptian relations with Rwanda,” said the outgoing envoy.

He said he also briefed the President about the situation in Egypt and the efforts by his country to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine.

The ambassador pointed out that bilateral relations between Rwanda and Egypt manifest in different domains including capacity building, security, energy and health.

"We also received a delegation of Egyptian businesses who wanted to explore investment opportunities in Rwanda,” Adbel-Salam said.

Meanwhile the envoy briefed President Kagame about the security of the Nile waters, noting that  his President, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, had been holding several meetings  regarding water security with some countries that share resources of River Nile.

Countries sharing the Nile River, including Rwanda and Egypt have for long been embroiled in a disagreement on the cooperative framework agreement that seeks to see all countries have an equal say on the Nile water usage.

Since 1999, countries sharing  River Nile have been negotiating an agreement that would enable equal usage of the Nile waters, but Egypt, and to some extent, Sudan, have rejected the move.

The agreement seeks the establishment of a permanent Nile River Basin Commission through which member states will come together to manage and develop resources of the Nile.