US President Joe Biden will arrive at the COP27 conference on Friday where delegates expect him to try to pump up global ambition to fight climate change.
His visit is the first stop in a packed week-long trip to grapple with some of the United States' thorniest foreign policy issues.
Biden's speech in Sharm El-Sheikh will remind countries to stay focused on the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. He will also discuss the importance of public-private partnership and detail US efforts to decarbonise and lower methane emissions.
Among announcements likely timed for his arrival, the United States and the European Union plan to make a joint announcement pledging to crack down on methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. Washington and Brussels already have proposals to do this, but the declaration is meant to encourage other countries to do the same, building on the Global Methane Pledge to slash methane emissions by 30% this decade.
Biden will have a bilateral meeting with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi on Friday during his short stopover to attend the COP27 summit, and he "will never shy away from raising human rights with foreign leaders," an official told journalists earlier this week.
The official said Biden was concerned about the health of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, who has been on a hunger strike at the Wadi El-Natrun prison.
Fears are mounting that Abdel Fattah is being force-fed to keep him alive while international attention fixes on Egypt for the climate summit.
Abdel Fattah is one of tens of thousands of Egyptians held as political prisoners since Sisi seized power of the country in a military coup in 2013.
Anti-government protests that will take aim at Egypt's deteriorating economic and human rights situations are planned for Friday. Egyptian security forces have detained scores of activists in the lead-up to the demonstrations.
(Reuters, The New Arab)