Sudan presses Egypt after islands conceded to Saudi

Sudan has reiterated that it will not abandon its “sovereign right” over the two border territories of Halayeb and Shalateen, which have long been subject to a dispute with Egypt.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour said on Monday that Khartoum “will not let go of our sovereign rights on” the territories, which overlook the Red Sea.

“We have adopted legal and political measures to assert our rights in the Halayeb triangle,” he added.

Sudan and Egypt have long disputed the ownership of the area, which is under Egyptian administration. Sudan has become more assertive since April, when Egypt transferred the sovereignty of two other Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.

Egypt, however, has ruled out doing the same in the dispute with Sudan.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zaid said in a statement last month that “Halayeb and Shalateen are Egyptian territories and they fall under Egyptian sovereignty.

Sudan’s foreign minister said the Sudanese government seeks to see the text of the agreement signed between Egypt and Saudi Arabia “to figure out the impact of this agreement on our maritime borders.”

According to media reports, in their maritime agreement, Riyadh and Cairo have used maps in which Halayeb falls within Egyptian territory.

Conceding the sovereignty of the strategic islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Riyadh provoked massive protests in the Egyptian capital.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Cairo and other cities last Friday against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s decision to give up the islands.

A large number of other people have also taken to social media over the past days to show their anger at the government decision.

The Tiran Island is located at the entrance of the Straits of Tiran, which separates the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aqaba. Its strategic significance lies in the fact that it is an important sea passage to the major ports of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel.

The Sanafir Island is in the east of Tiran, and measures 33 square kilometers (13 square miles) in area.

The ownership of the two islands had been handed to Egypt in 1982, when Tel Aviv and Cairo signed the so-called Camp David peace accords.

Egypt journalists stage open-ended sit-in

On Monday, Egypt’s Journalists’ Syndicate called for the dismissal of the country’s interior minister; and its members launched an open-ended sit-in at the syndicate’s headquarters in Cairo to protest the arrest of two journalists.

The syndicate’s building has been under police attention since last month, when over 2,000 demonstrators gathered in front of it to protest the government’s decision to hand over the two islands to Saudi Arabia.

Police raided the syndicate on Sunday night and arrested journalists Amr Badr and Mahmoud el-Sakka, accusing them of “organizing protests to destabilize the country.”

The syndicate denounced the police entry into its building as a “raid by security forces whose blatant barbarism and aggression on the dignity of the press and journalists and their syndicate has surprised the journalistic community and the Egyptian people.”

Police have reportedly deployed hundreds of uniformed and undercover police officers to central Cairo to prevent any protests during the raid.

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