UK's Sisi invitation signals business as usual with Egypt

When Abdel Fatah al-Sisi enters 10 Downing Street for talks with David Cameron on Thursday, it will be the latest in a series of diplomatic advances which confirm that the Egyptian president is now accorded broad international legitimacy, even as opponents condemn him as a dictator who seized power in an illegal coup.

In the run-up to Sisi’s arrival in London there have been protests from Egyptians, Britons and others angered by his overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood’s democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi in June 2013 and the repression that has continued and deepened since then.

By issuing the invitation in July, the UK government signalled that it is business as usual with Cairo. Significant economic interests and urgent priorities elsewhere in the region – the war in Syria, the threat of Islamic State and instability in Libya – have trumped concerns over human rights, governance and political freedoms.

The US has acted similarly. Barack Obama initially refused to label Morsi’s overthrow a coup because that would have required the suspension of aid. After a brief froideur, Washington unfroze the delivery of Apache helicopters and resumed its $1.5bn (£1bn) annual aid package. Russia exploited that period to seize opportunities in Egypt when Vladimir Putin visited Cairo in February.

Sisi has been on a roll. On Saturday he was the keynote speaker at the Manama Dialogue, a prestigious strategic conference held annually in the Bahraini capital. In June he visited Berlin after the engineering giant Siemens secured an understanding about a multibillion-euro contract.