Your Excellency, dear Mr. Ambassador,

I take it as an honour to be asked to say a few words on the occasion of the farewell reception in honour of Ambassador Hindam leaving our country. This occasion is an opportunity to express our gratitude for the ambassador’s activities here, to say good bye and to wish him many successful and positive years in the future.

Ambassador Hindam is a good friend of many of us. He proved to be both a good friend of the Czech Republic and a perfect ambassador of his country.

He has been one of the most visible ambassadors here in Prague, in spite of the fact that his service here had been unfavourably influenced by the Covid epidemic. He tried to understand the Czech Republic and helped us to understand his country. He successfully tried to contribute to the Czech-Egyptian relations in all fields.

His country, Egypt, is our main partner in Africa and the Arab world. This partnership, which started more than one hundred years ago, when our diplomatic relations were established, survived all the changes in both our countries during this complicated century.

Egypt is relatively well-known to many Czechs, to tourists, to business people, to politicians. I myself visited Egypt already in the 1960s, quarter of a century before entering politics, and I kept visiting Egypt in all my political functions in the last three decades.

We, the Czechs, follow with great interest the developments in Egypt and the whole region. We know that the role of Egypt is absolutely crucial for the stability of this rather complicated region.

Mr. Ambassador, many thanks.

Václav Klaus, Farewell Reception, Embassy of Egypt, Prague, November 14, 2022