CAIRO, May 31 (Aswat Masriya) - Egyptians on social media have been sharing their apologies on Tuesday after reports emerged that Egypt's representative at the United Nations Environment Assembly meeting, made racist comments against other African delegations.

The chairman of the Africa Diplomatic Corps Technical committee, Yvonne Khamati, demanded that Egypt apologise for the racist remarks made during the summit as resolutions were being adopted during the closing session in Nairobi on May 27.

Egypt's representative, the environmental minister Khaled Mohamed Fahmy Abdel Aal "referred to sub-Saharan Africa as dogs and slaves in Arabic," Khamati wrote in an official memorandum on May 29.

In the memorandum which is addressed to the Dean of the Africa Diplomatic Corps, Khamati demanded that Egypt "should not negotiate or take any leadership position on behalf of Africa."

"We feel that these uncivilized, racist, discriminatory and vindictive utterances do not advance the vision of the 2063 African Agenda and the Pan-Africanism that was advocated by the founding fathers of the African Union," said Khamati in the memorandum, which was made public.

Abdel Aal is believed to have made the comments at the closing of the summit, after a miscommunication over a resolution that was not adopted.  

On the other hand, an official at the Egyptian foreign ministry told Aswat Masriya that Khamati's demands are "unbalanced" and "imprecise." He added that Abdel Aal did not make these remarks but was only disagreeing with the resolutions adopted at the session. 

Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said in a statement on Tuesday that the ministry will investigate the issue to see what actually took place. The foreign ministry also decried what it called attempts to question Egypt's loyalty to the African Union. 

Meanwhile, Khamati has been receiving apologies from Egyptians through social media. One user addressed her saying, "as a proud Egyptian who grew up in Kenya ... allow me to dissociate us from 'our' unrepresentative representative."

Another user called Khamati, "the brave diplomat who stood up to the racist Egyptian diplomat at the UN."

"This issue should be raised to the Permanent Representative Committee in Addis Ababa, New York, Vienna, Geneva and subsequently to the Heads of State summit to be held in Kigali, Rwanda in July 2016," Khamati also requested. 

"I don't think we should apologise for this insult. We're Africans and these words hurt us too. This man [referring to the Egyptian minister] should apologise to us," an Egyptian social media user told Khamati.