Middle East needs a strong, developing Saudi Arabia and stable Egypt

The Arab world needs a "strong, developing Saudi Arabia and a stable, robust Egypt" in order to restore stability to the region, a Government minister says.

Dr Anwar Gargash, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, also spoke of the legacy of the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 and conflict in Syria, Yemen and other states in a speech at the Abu Dhabi Strategic Debate on Sunday.

"It is only by adopting a strategy focused primarily on achieving stability that we will be able to alter the current trajectory," he said.

"In the UAE’s view, the success of this strategy depends on there being a strong, developing Saudi Arabia and a stable, robust Egypt.

"But it will also ultimately depend on the success of modernising agendas across the region, for the UAE does not argue for a return to the past."

Dr Gargash said there was a myth that the UAE sought a return to a time before the Arab uprisings six years ago, in which rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen were ousted and civil unrest and protests broke out in many other countries.

"This is profoundly mistaken," he said.

"The UAE was right to fear the consequences of revolution - it has proved easier to destroy institutions than to build new ones, and revolutions have created vacuums that extremists have exploited and that have allowed certain regional players to exercise an outside role in our world.

"But the UAE has always been a passionate advocate of evolutionary change in our region."

Dr Gargash said unrest has had "terrible humanitarian consequences" in recent years. And last year, the United Nations estimated that the cost of the uprisings between 2011 and 2015 cost the region more than $600 billion in economic activity.

"The pendulum tends to swing between aspirations for stability and development and the realities of chaos and violence," he said.

"Too many people are suffering the terrible humanitarian consequences of the recent years of turmoil.

"We keep trying to manage these complicated issues but so far, we found the solutions to them elusive."