By Itzhak Rabihiya
Netanyahu is expected to announce a diplomatic breakthrough today with a country in the region, whose leader he is meeting in Uganda.
Israel may get good news today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before boarding a flight to Entebbe, Uganda on Monday, where he will meet a leader from the region in addition to Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
Netanyahu is expected to announce an upgrade in ties with a state with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations later in the day. Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen was on the flight with Netanyahu.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and told him: "This is a real friendship. This is my fifth visit to Uganda in over—it began many decades ago, and our first meeting, Mr. President, which I'll never forget. Israel is coming back to Africa and Africa is coming back to Israel in a big way. It began here in Uganda, and it continues in Uganda under your strong leadership, the way that you have put Africa and Uganda on the world stage.
Ugandan President Museveni responded regarding the embassy: "If a friend says, I want your embassy here, rather than there, I don't see why it wouldn't be. We are studying that."
Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is an Evangelical Christian. If Uganda opens an embassy in Jerusalem, it will be the third country to do so, following the US and Guatemala.
However, reports the country plans to open an embassy in Jerusalem are false, Ugandan Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry Patrick Mugova told local media. Kampala does not have a mission to Israel, while Israel has a visa processing office in the Ugandan capital.
Netanyahu last visited Uganda in 2016 to hold a seven-country summit and to mark the 40th anniversary of the raid on Entebbe, in which his brother Yoni Netanyahu, the operation’s commander, was killed.
Later Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, met in Entebbe, Uganda, on the invitation of Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. It was agreed to start cooperation leading to normalization of the relationship between the two countries.
Prime Minister Netanyahu believes that Sudan is headed in a new positive direction and he expressed his views to the Secretary of State of the United States of America.
The Chairman of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al Burhan, is eager to help his country modernize by taking it out of isolation and putting it on the world’s map.
Attached photo credit: Haim Zach (GPO)
