There have been reports that Egypt's military is looking for weapons suppliers other than the United States, which has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid after the army overthrew Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July.

Weapons withheld included the delivery of F-16 aircraft, M1A1 tanks and Apache helicopters.

Egyptian authorities indicated earlier that the Egyptian military might want to get the Russian warplanes efficiently operating at low altitudes and top-notch antitank missiles, The Sunday Times said on Sunday.

Also, they have interest in the modernization of Soviet-era tanks that are still found on the Egyptian Army’s inventory, the daily added.

The newspaper recalls that the U.S. Administration froze at the beginning of this month the supplies of Apache strike helicopter, Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles, F-16 fighter jets, and spare parts for tanks.

It quotes a respected Egyptian analyst, Moataz Bellah Abdel-Fattah as saying a vacuum has emerged in Egypt’s strategic policies and Russia has gotten an opportunity to fill it.

Egypt had received some 1.3 billion dollars in annual military aid from the United States since it signed a peace accord with Israel late in the 1970s.

NJF/NJF