Egypt will restructure its foreign relations to base them on collaboration and mutual interests, presidential spokesperson Yasser Ali said.
Meeting with foreign reporters at the State Information Service building in Nasr City, Ali said President Mohamed Morsy's visit to China Monday would seek to open channels of cooperation and attract investment opportunities, state news agency MENA reported. Ali added that the president's visit to China would not tackle Beijing's funding of dams built by Nile Basin countries on the Nile, stressing that Egypt respects every country's right to seek its interests according to its discretion.
Ali also addressed the crisis in Syria. He said Egypt included Iran in its proposed four-state panel, also consisting of Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to work on solving the crisis because the problem cannot be resolved without engaging all active regional parties.
He said Morsy's visit to Iran would only last for a few hours, during which Egypt is set to hand over the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement — a group of countries that say they are not aligned with a particular power bloc — to Iran.
Additionally, Ali said Morsy's visit to the US on 24 September will only be to attend the UN General Assembly meeting in New York, adding that Egypt is considering arranging presidential visits to Latin American countries, particularly Brazil.
Meanwhile, Essam al-Erian, acting chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party, said that President Mohamed Morsy’s visit to China and Iran would help press the Syrian regime to bring bloodshed in Syria to an end.
On his Facebook page, Erian said Morsy's success in convincing China and Iran to press the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to cease his bloody crackdown on his people will represent a starting point for the four-state panel that Morsy had proposed to solve the Syrian crisis.
Iran is widely believed to have been providing the Syrian regime with all means of support, including weaponry, in its bloody campaign on pro-democracy protesters. Russian and Chinese vetoes in October, February and July stonewalled discussions of the Syrian crisis at the UN Security Council. The three states strongly oppose any military intervention in the war-torn country.
