Eurasia Press & News
Teheran- Iran was determined to normalize ties with Egypt and was just waiting for Cairo’s reply to do so, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Saturday. Mottaki told ILNA news agency that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had already voiced Iran’s willingness to normalize ties but Tehran was waiting for an official reply from Cairo.
While terming Iran and Egypt as the two main pillars of the Islamic world, Ahmadinejad said during his state visit to the United Arab Emirates earlier this week that if Egypt agreed with normalizing diplomatic relations “today,” Iran would send an ambassador to Cairo “tomorrow.”
Iran’s National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani on Thursday, however, said that there were “still some considerations” before upgrading ties with Egypt to ambassador level.
The two Muslim countries have had no diplomatic ties since the 1979 Islamic revolution due to Egypt’s Camp David Accord with Israel in 1978.
During the eight-year presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), Tehran tried to resume full diplomatic relations with Cairo but failed to do so.
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.
