The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, returns to the Middle East on his third tour of the region, with which he seeks to promote a solution to the serious crisis in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On this occasion, he will visit Jordan and Egypt, two countries bordering Israel and Palestine, and key in the ongoing negotiations for the release of hostages and cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
Albares thus fulfills the commitment he made during his first tour of Lebanon and Iraq, at the end of January, to travel frequently to the region to seek solutions to the conflict. In just a month and a half, in addition to these countries, the minister has visited Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, which allowed him to address the situation with these three important players in the Gulf, to which he now adds Jordan and Egypt.
Amman will be the first stop on this third tour as it is a strategic enclave in the region. Albares arrives tomorrow, Tuesday, March 12, in the Jordanian capital in the middle of Ramadan. There he has been personally invited by his counterpart, Aymán Safadi, to an iftar, the dinner with which the fast is broken after sunset and with which a deep friendship is symbolized by sharing a table at a time of the day so marked for the Islamic world.
This will be the starting point of an intense work agenda that continues the next day in Amman with high-level meetings, especially focused on the meeting with the Jordanian Foreign Minister. Albares and Safadi will have the opportunity to review, in addition to the excellent state of bilateral relations, the worrying situation in the region. The Spanish Minister and his Jordanian counterpart also plan to give details of the meeting at a press conference.
Visit to the refugee camp
Albares, who will take advantage of his visit to the Jordanian capital to meet with Spanish aid workers in the country, will visit an UNRWA refugee camp in Jordan just a week after announcing to the UN agency's commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini, the donation of 20 million euros more so that the agency can continue its work to help the Palestinian population.
Egypt will be the second stop, as it is the center of the negotiations and it is where some of the main actors with the capacity to influence the resolution of the serious Israeli-Palestinian conflict are to be found.
After his visit to Amman, Albares will arrive in Cairo late in the afternoon on Wednesday, March 13, when he plans to meet with the heads of UN agencies working in the country, whom he wishes to recognize for their extraordinary work.
The following day he will meet his counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, with whom he will discuss the different solutions being considered to give a new impetus to peace and how the two countries can jointly contribute to facilitate this objective. Albares and Shoukry will appear before the media after holding early Thursday morning, March 14, political consultations between the two countries.
Despite the limitations that a period like Ramadan implies, Minister Albares plans to be received at the highest level by the Egyptian authorities, as well as by the Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, and the representatives of this organization, which was one of the first to adopt the Spanish proposal for the International Peace Conference, which has subsequently been joined by up to 90 countries.
Albares plans to complete the day in Cairo with a meeting with the correspondents of the Spanish media, with whom he will take stock of the tour, which concludes after three intense days of work in Jordan and Egypt.