Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is due to meet with US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton next week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meetings in New York, according to member of Clinton's staff.
The former US Secretary of State will be “conducting secondary meetings outside of the UN General Assembly’s program next week” with various world leaders, including Sisi and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the source said.
Clinton’s campaign staff have announced that her planned meeting with Sisi reflects the crucial role Egypt will continue to play in US politics into the future.
Clinton, who is the US Democratic Party's presidential candidate, is seeking to build alliances with world leaders in order to gain political advantage over her Republican Party rival Donald Trump.
The meeting with Poroshenko is intended to show her solidarity with the new government in Ukraine, which was installed after a US backed uprising in 2014, which many, including Russia, have described as a coup.
Since then, Ukraine has been bogged down in a civil war between forces loyal to the new government in Kiev and rebels from the Russian-speaking Donbass region in the east of the country.
As Secretary of State, Clinton backed the regime-change operation in Ukraine, and has since been harshly critical of Russia for supporting the Russian-speaking population the country in it's battle to assert independence from Kiev.
Both US President Barack Obama and Clinton have backed sanctions against Russia since 2014, while Trump has expressed his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, describing him as a better leader than Obama.
There has been no announcement yet of any planned meeting between Sisi and Trump.
