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Iran Says to Be Moving to Normalize Ties With Egypt
Iran and Egypt are moving to remove barriers to normalization of their bilateral relations though "it is hard to give any word on an exact date" for full restoration of ties, local press reported on Tuesday.
"Our relations with Egypt have improved in different political, economic and cultural fields and I think that the two countries should continue their efforts to remove barriers," Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi was quoted as saying.
Asefi noted that "the foreign ministries of the two countries are in continuous contact with each other and a new climate has been created between the two sides." But he refused to give an exact date for full normalization of the Tehran-Cairo ties.
Iran and Egypt broke ties in 1979 after Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel. The Tehran-Cairo ties have significantly warmed since last June when Iran's President Mohammad Khatami held the first phone conversation with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak.
It was reported that Iran and Egypt now run interest sections through the Swiss embassies in Cairo and Tehran, operated by Iranian and Egyptian diplomats.
But a senior Egyptian official said recently that his country has decided to grind a halt to its normalization talks with Iran after a hardline Iranian group unveiled a portrait of Khaled Eslambouli, the assassin of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. A Tehran street named after Khaled Eslambouli remains the only sticking point in a thaw in bilateral ties.
The hardline Iranian group's actions came months after members of the Tehran City Council were said to have agreed to a proposal to change the name of the street from Khaled Eslambouli to either " Intifada (uprising) Martyrs" or "Mohammad ad-Durra," a young Palestinian shot dead by Israeli troops while huddling beside his father for shelter from bullets.
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