Top Iranian foreign ministry officials will leave for Cairo July 20 to attend a conference on Iran-Egypt ties, which have started to warm up, reported the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, on Thursday.
The agency said the Iranian delegation would be headed by Deputy Iranian Foreign Minister Sadeq Kharrazi.
Last July, Tehran hosted a roundtable in a further sign of rapprochement, the agency said.
Based on the agreements reached between the Iranian Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) and the Egyptian Al Ahram Strategic Studies Bureau, political thinkers and experts will meet to discuss bilateral ties, IRNA said.
Tehran-Cairo ties have significantly warmed since June 2000, when President Mohammad Khatami spoke over the phone with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak, the first such conversation by the presidents of the two countries since they severed ties in 1979 after Egypt signed the Camp David peace treaty with Israel.
Relations have since improved, and the two countries now run interest sections through the Swiss embassies in Cairo and Tehran, operated by Iranian and Egyptian diplomats.
The only sticking point between the two countries remains the renaming of a Tehran street which honors the assassin of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.
In an unexpected move, Tehran City Council voted to open an urgent debate on the issue, which has long hampered efforts to improve Iran-Egypt ties.
Members of the council were said to have agreed to a proposal to change the name of the street from Khaled Eslambouli to either 'Intifada’ or 'Mohammad Al Durra,' after a young Palestinian who was shot dead by the Israeli troops while huddling beside his father for shelter from bullets – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
