Egypt and Germany have signed a number of security cooperation agreements, reported Middle East Monitor.
The agreements address a number of areas, including illegal immigration, counter-terrorism, and securing airports, the Egyptian interior ministry announced in a statement on Monday.
According to the statement, Abdel Ghaffar signed an intelligence-sharing agreement, an extradition agreement including Interpol Red Notice warrants and an agreement that would see Germany train Egyptian security personnel to investigate financial crimes.
The statement also stated that the two ministers held talks at the German interior ministry headquarters in Berlin to review aspects of cooperation between the two ministries.
The German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière visited Cairo at the end of March for two days. During the visit, he discussed ways to enhance cooperation in areas such as security, counter-terrorism, airport security, and immigration.
Moreover, German vice-chancellor and minister of economic affairs Sigmar Gabriel announced that potential arms deal with Egypt during a press conference held in Cairo in April 2016.
Gabriel said at the press conference that “The Egyptian government did not ask Germany for a weapons deal during this visit, but there was a discussion about supplying two naval submarines. We are ready to fully cooperate with Egypt to secure its borders with Libya.”
Germany announced the naval submarine deal in 2012. Under the initial terms of the agreement, Germany would export four state-of-the-art military submarines to Egypt. On 10 December 2015, Germany completed the first submarine, according to the state-owned MENA news agency.
Despite the difficult financial economic crisis, the Egyptian government signed several arms deals with European countries.
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an international think-tank based in Sweden, documented in a report that Egypt’s arms imports rose by 37% between 2006 and 2010, and 2011 and 2015.
SIPRI calculates that the value of arms transfers to Egypt in 2015 reached US$1.475bn, compared to US$686m in 2010 and US$368m in 2014.
Gabriel said that, due to the current security situation, Egypt has “legal rights to ask for weapons.”
According to the latest German arms exports report, despite restrictions imposed on the international sale of weapons for nearly 15 years to enhance peace worldwide, Germany became the world’s fourth-largest arms exporter in 2015.
Recently Germany has approved several arms deals with a number of Arabian Gulf States, including Oman and the United Arab Emirates, according to Gabriel’s letter to lawmakers in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German legislative body.
