The agreement coincides with the Qatari foreign minister’s visit to Cairo.
Qatar and Egypt have signed investment deals totaling $5 billion in a number of sectors, the Egyptian cabinet announced on Tuesday.
It follows a meeting between Qatar’s Minister of Finance Ali bin Ahmed Al Kuwari and his Egyptian counterpart Mohamed Maait, where they discussed bilateral trade.
Qatar and Egypt have agreed to form a joint higher committee headed by the two countries’ foreign ministers to strengthen their bilateral cooperation, as diplomatic ties return to “their normal state.”
This came during the visit of Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani to Egypt.
Sheikh Mohammed’s first visit to Cairo since the signing of the Al-Ula declaration in 2021 took place last March, followed with another visit in May.
During the second visit, Sheikh Mohammed had delivered Qatar’s Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani’s invitation to Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to visit Doha.
Shoukry then traveled to Qatar in June of the same year.
Egypt joined Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE in severing their diplomatic ties with Qatar whilst imposing an illegal air, land and sea embargo on the country in 2017.
In a joint press conference, Sheikh Mohammed and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry said that Qatar and Egypt’s bilateral ties have returned back to normal.
Sheikh Mohammed has said that Qatar and Egypt “have passed the difficult stage with open hearts and a future outlook”. The diplomats also discussed regional and international developments.
“The Egyptian Foreign Minister underlined that impurities had been removed from the relations between the two countries thanks to the consensus on Al-Ula Declaration,” said Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA).
The two countries had formed a follow-up committee after the signing of the accord on 5 January last year. Qatar and Egypt have since announced new cooperations in various fields.
There are approximately more than 350,000 Egyptian nationals in the Gulf state.
President Sisi had appointed a new ambassador to Doha in June as Qatar appointed its first envoy to Cairo since the diplomatic rift in July.
Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera also broadcasted live from Egypt in August for the first time since 2013. The channel was shut down per an Egyptian judicial decision made following a raid that saw the arrest of several journalists.
Despite this, some Al Jazeera journalists, including Hisham Abdelaziz and Rabie Al-Sheikh, remain behind bars in Egypt.
On Tuesday, Amnesty International renewed calls on Egyptian authorities to release Al-Sheikh, who was detained six months ago upon arriving in Cairo. Al-Sheikh has been accused of spreading fake news.
Egypt continued to extend the detention of Abdelaziz without a trial, despite authorities exceeding the legal period of pretrial detention. He was arrested in Cairo International Airport on 20 June, 2019, accused of “joining a terrorist group”.
Al Jazeera had slammed the accusations raised against its employee as “baseless” and called for his immediate release.
According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Egypt stands as one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in 2021 that 25 journalists remain in Egyptian prisons. Those journalists often spend years in jail and solitary confinement without being formally charged or tried.
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