Trump and Clinton to meet Egypt's President Sisi at UN

An adviser to Donald Trump said on Sunday that the US Republican presidential nominee will meet Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday during the gathering in New York of the United Nations General Assembly.

His presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, had announced last week that she would meet Sisi in a bilateral session expected to take place late on Monday. Then, a foreign policy advisor to Trump, Walid Phares, told Reuters on Sunday that Trump would have talks with Sisi on the same day.

The French President, Francois Hollande, will also reported to have set a meeting with Sisi on Tuesday.

Trump has tried to burnish his foreign policy credentials in recent weeks in an effort to match Clinton, the former secretary of state under President Barack Obama and a US Senator from New York.

The property magnate visited Mexico late last month to meet President Enrique Pena Nieto and discuss border security between the two nations.

Egypt remains in turmoil after its 2011 revolution against long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak. The uprising was initially supported by the Obama administration, although Clinton has since written that she, as the then secretary of state, had advised a more conservative approach toward Mubarak’s exit.

Sisi, a former army general and defence minister, came to power in 2013 after a military coup against Egypt’s first and only democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

Some Republicans in the US House of Representatives have since accused the Obama administration of abandoning its support of Egypt's military government in its battle against Islamist militants.

Trump has called for aggressive measures to combat the threat of Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria and has proposed blocking immigrants into the US from countries that, he says, pose a threat. Earlier in his campaign, he suggested banning all Muslims from entering the country.