French President Francois Hollande is scheduled to attend the Suez Canal inauguration ceremony on 6 August as a guest of honour, in his first visit to Egypt since being elected president.

Hollande will preside over the celebration along with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Three French Rafale jets and a FREMM frigate delivered to Egypt on 20 July will take part in the celebrations.

The visit, which serves as a huge political favour for the Sisi regime, marks a shift in French diplomacy.

Hollande will be accompanied by a high level delegation that includes French defence minster Jean-Yves Le Drian and Jack Lang, head of the Arab World Institute.

Directors of French arms companies involved in the Rafale deal, which includes advanced missiles systems and other military hardware, will also be present.

The visit, which serves as a huge political favour for the Sisi regime, marks a shift in French diplomacy, as the country prefers the Rafale diplomacy of selling weapons in return for turning a blind eye to human rights abuses and the overthrow of the democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

The visit also ends French hesitation towards the Sisi regime, after Hollande condemned the coup in July 2013 at the end of a meeting with former Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki.

Since then Paris has signed a Rafale deal with Cairo, and welcomed Sisi on an official visit in November 2014 as the legitimate president of Egypt.

France has not released any statements condemning Sisi's regime's grave human rights violations, and the French presidency and foreign ministry have not commented on the death sentences handed out to Mohamed Morsi and leading Muslim Brotherhood figures.

This article is an edited translation from our Arabic edition.