Egypt's Foreign Minister to attend funeral of Israel's Shimon Peres

Thursday 29-09-2016 10:55 PM

Former Israeli President Shimon Peres visits Israeli military base in Tel Aviv, 1985 - Reuters

CAIRO, Sept 29 (Aswat Masriya) - Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is set to attend the funeral of former Israeli president Shimon Peres, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.

Shoukry is scheduled to leave to Israel on Thursday night in a private jet, the ministry said in its statement.

Nobel laureate Peres died at the age of 93 on Wednesday. He shared the prize with Israel's late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for a 1993 accord that failed to materialize into durable peace.

Peres served as the Prime Minister of Israel twice, and was appointed Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Defense, among many other positions. He became the ninth Israeli president in 2007. 

The funeral will take place in the "Great Leaders of the Nation" section of Jerusalem's Mount Herzl cemetery, Reuters reported.

Shoukry made a rare visit to Israel in July, where he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pushed for renewed peace talks between Israel and Palestine.

In his UN speech on Sept. 20, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged Israeli leadership to find a solution to the Arab Israeli conflict and called for the resumption of the Israel-Palestinian peace process.

The peace process has been suspended since the collapse of a US-led initiative between the Palestinian and Israeli sides in April 2014. 

Sisi welcomed the new Israeli ambassador David Govrin late August.

Israel's new ambassador to Egypt has arrived in Cairo earlier in July to take up his post, after his predecessor had asked to step down after only two years of service. 

The Israeli Embassy in Cairo reopened in September 2015, after being closed for four years. The closure happened after a group of Egyptian protesters stormed into the embassy’s Giza building, as thousands demonstrated against Israel's killing of five Egyptian soldiers in Sinai.

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