Washington - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will visit Egypt today (Thursday), continuing Washington's warming of relations with Cairo during the Trump administration's first 100 days. Mattis is expected to speak with Egyptian Defense Minister Sedki Sobhy, military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Hegazy and President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, whose White House visit earlier this month was the first by an Egyptian leader since former U.S. President Barack Obama hosted Hosni Mubarak in 2009. Middle East expert James Gelvin, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, told VOA much of the Trump administration's policy is aimed at being anti-Obama. "In other words, [Trump] looks at what Obama did and says, ‘I'm going to do something very, very different,'" Gelvin said. Mattis is expected to push Egypt to remain tough on counter-terrorism amid a threat in the Sinai Peninsula and even in some urban areas, as shown in the deadly Palm Sunday attacks on Coptic churches in Alexandria and Tanta conducted by Islamic State militants. "It seems that this threat is growing. The first thing is, get your own house in order, Egypt," Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for national security at the Center for American Progress, told VOA. Katulis said Mattis and others in the Trump administration should lean on allies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to make sure partner efforts on the ground in Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Libya do not "simply fragment these countries" and instead connect to "actually isolating terrorist and extremist groups [while] also consolidating power in these countries." In Libya, the U.S. has thus far supported the U.N.-backed Government of National Accord while providing airstrikes to help Libyans push Islamic State out of the country. Egypt also has bombed Islamic State targets in Libya but has instead backed Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar.
