Egypt's General Consul in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) Fawzi el-Ashmawi denied any tension between Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the backdrop of the problems faced by Egyptian workers in the Kingdom. In an exclusive interview to Al-Masry Al-Youm on the phone, he said: "There's no problem with Riyadh. On the contrary, the special relations between our two countries help to quickly solve any problem that Egyptians in Saudi Arabia may face". El-Ashmawi, though, revealed that the Egyptian consulate in the Saudi capital receives every day some 20 complaints from Egyptians working there. He explained that most of those problems were disputes at the workplace and added that Saudi Arabia has recently developed the way it deals with and follows up on these problems to solve them quickly, especially after the application of the new electronic system. In this new system, Saudi Arabia asks every foreign diplomatic mission not to send any data without the residence number. "Before this system was introduced, it used to take us some three months to get an answer from Saudi authorities concerning any problem. Now, though, it only takes a month or two" he said. "We have raised this issue with Saudi officials during our meetings with them. We also asked them to inform us if any Egyptian was detained by the general investigation bureaus so that the consulate may do what is necessary in such cases and look into the causes of the arrest." He added that when it comes to normal detentions, Saudi authorities cooperate, inform the Egyptian diplomatic mission and allow members of this mission to visit the Egyptian detainees. In response to a question about Egyptian engineer Yousef Ashmawi, currently being held by Saudi authorities, the consul said there was nothing new and that he was being detained for a security case.
