US denies the delayed return of serviced military equipment

The US State Department released a statement Tuesday, via the US Embassy in Egypt, denying allegations of postponing the return of Egyptian military choppers that were sent back to the US for maintenance, CNN reported.

“One helicopter was sent to the US for an upgrade. The upgrade is complete, and it’s available to be shipped back to Egypt at any time,” the statement added.

Egyptian media reports had quoted the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nabil Fahmy saying that, “the Egyptian armed forces send a number of Apache helicopters to the US for maintenance and they haven’t been shipped back yet.”

Meanwhile, Moufeed al-Deek, the press attache and new spokesperson for the American embassy in Cairo said in an interview on private MBC Misr channel that “the US sees in Egypt an ally and partner in the region, and we’re ready to establish strong relations with Egypt,” privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper reported.

Deek whose embassy strongly denied the “inaccurate allegations made by the Egyptian media,” said that the US is reassessing relations with Egypt, and that “once the re-evaluation is over, things will go in the right direction, and the aid program will return to normal.”

These counter-statements evidence the continuous tension in Egyptian-American relations that followed the toppling of former President Mohamed Morsy, when the US$1.5 billion military and economic aid program to Egypt was frozen, in line with a US law that prevents the funding of a foreign military that has conducted a coup against a democratically elected government.