国际英语新闻:Egypt's Sisi receives Saudi king in Cairo

CAIRO, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Egypt's newly-elected President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has received Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at Cairo airport on Friday late evening in the first visit by a head of state to Egypt since Sisi's inauguration earlier this month, the Egyptian state TV reported.

In a rare scene in such reception ceremonies, Sisi ascended the Saudi plane carrying the king and met with him onboard.

Sisi-Abdullah face-to-face meeting has been held onboard the plane and the state TV showed an external view of the plane and some shots of the onboard meeting.

Sisi finally bid farewell to the king and his accompanying delegation and descended the Saudi plane that took off in around one hour from its arrival in Cairo.

The talks addressed the Egyptian-Saudi bilateral relations and the importance of their coordinated positions on some regional issues including the recent regional developments in Iraq, Syria and Libya, official MENA news agency reported while the onboard meeting was in process.

According to the state-run news agency, Sisi thanked the Saudi king for his country's "great support" for the new Egyptian leadership since the ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July following mass protests against his one-year rule and his Muslim Brotherhood group.

King Abdullah stops at Cairo on his way back home from Morocco, where the aging monarch received medical treatment, adding that the two leaders are scheduled to hold joint talks that will be followed by a private meeting.

It is also Abdullah's first visit to Egypt since the 2011 ouster of currently-detained former president Hosni Mubarak, a close ally of both Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Since Morsi's deposal, the world's top oil exporter has thrown its weight behind Sisi and provided Egypt's interim government with aid worth billions of U.S. dollars.

King Abdullah, who is also the first world leader to congratulate Sisi shortly after winning the late-May presidential elections, hailed former army leader's victory as "a historical day," and called for a donor conference to help the flagging Egyptian economy revive.

Saudi Arabia has followed suit of Egypt in branding the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails, as "a terrorist group."

The kingdom is one of Egypt's major Gulf supporters including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.