Tehran - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Saturday invited his Egyptian counterpart to Tehran but did not disclose the date, ISNA news agency reported. Iran has tried in the last ten years to normalize diplomatic relations with Egypt.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is eager to upgrade bilateral ties and several times stressed that if Egypt agreed to normalize diplomatic relations "today," Iran would send an ambassador to Cairo "tomorrow."
In a meeting with new head of the Egyptian interest section in Tehran, Aleddin Hassan-Youssef, Mottaki said that Egypt was an important country in the region and termed Tehran-Cairo consultaions over the Middle East as useful for regional states.
"Within the new global situation, Egypt and Iran could start a new diplomacy for creating grounds for biltareal trust and understanding as well as cooperation for taking new steps for serving the interests of Islamic states," Mottaki said.
But despite efforts by both Ahmadinejad and his predecessor Mohammad Khatami to resume full diplomatic relations with Egypt, the government in Cairo has been hesitant to do so.
The two Muslim countries have had no diplomatic ties since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution due to Egypt's Camp David Accord with Israel in 1978 although the pair keep interest sections in each other's capitals.
One of the main disputes between the two states was the naming of a Tehran street after the assassin of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, which Iran later agreed to change to Intifada (uprising) Street in reference to the Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
In return, Tehran wants Egypt to change the name of a street in Cairo named after the late Iranian king Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi who is also buried in the al-Rifai mosque in the Egyptian capital.
