 Egypt has emphatically dismissed as baseless Israeli reports on a deal allowing a NATO troop deployment on the Philadelphia Route between Egypt and Gaza Strip.The denial was made by a spokesman for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a news release handed out here Wednesday. The spokesman billed such Israeli reports as "totally divorced from reality" and reflects a total misunderstanding of the natural of the relationship between Egypt and the NATO.| "Certainly not! And write down just how hard I waved my hands while making the denial!" |
However, he said, both sides only hammered out an agreement called "individual cooperation program" in Brussels on Tuesday, with the goal of reinforcing bilateral cooperation in such humanitarian domains as field hospitals at hot spots and UN peacekeeping operations.| "It is more of an individual ... cooperation program. Not anything like you just said it was. See my hands waving?" |
The program came within the framework of resolutions made during a NATO summit in Istanbul in 2004 on possible cooperative deals between the NATO and seven neighboring Mediterranean countries notably; Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Israel, he added. It is the Egyptian side which worked out the program document in a way that would boost Egypt's capabilities in humanitarian fields, the Egyptian spokesman noted.| Though Egypt's definition of humanitarian fields can be somewhat ... flexible. |
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