Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as well as leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Tunisia will visit China this week, Beijing’s foreign ministry said Monday.
The leaders will from May 28 to June 1 “pay state visits to China and attend the opening ceremony of the 10th Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum”, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement.
Tunisian President Kais Saied and the UAE’s President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The meeting with Arab leaders in Beijing comes as China seeks to position itself as a mediator in the conflict between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel.
China has historically been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and supportive of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
And President Xi Jinping has called for an “international peace conference” to resolve the fighting.
In November, Beijing hosted a meeting of foreign ministers of the Palestinian Authority, Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan for talks aimed at a “de-escalation” of the current Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,984 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.