Egypt, Russia to establish nuclear weapon free zones

CAIRO 29 July 2017: Egypt and Russia discussed at a high level meeting on Friday establishing free areas of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East to ensure the security of the region.

The meeting that took place in Cairo was headed by Hisham Badr, the Assistant of Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister and Mikhail Ulyanov, Director of the Foreign Ministry Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control on Friday.

During the meeting both sides discussed a number of topics of common interest, mainly the establishment of a free zone of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, as well as ways of advancing these efforts through the preparatory committees of the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.

The discussions also covered the latest developments of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty negotiations and ways of adopting it at the conference held at the UN headquarters in New York for this purpose at the end of May.

It also discussed means of promoting joint efforts between the two countries to ensure a peaceful outer space without turning it into a new field of arms race.

Since 2013, Egypt and Russia have agreed to work hard together to secure a ban on nuclear weapons in the Middle east, to guarantee safety and security in the region. This came following Syria’s pledges to stop using chemical weapons.