FM: Iran Looks Forward to Hosting Mursi in NAM Summit

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran looks forward to hosting Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi in the 16th heads-of-state summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran late August.

“Any international forum, including the NAM, normally has a troika which consists of its former, present and future presidents,” Salehi told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday.

“Now we should receive the presidency of the conference from Egypt and the Egyptian president should deliver the Movement’s presidency to the next president,” he added.

“From this point of view, we are looking forward to hosting Mr. Mursi in Iran,” Salehi said.

On Monday, a large number of Middle-East media, including the Lebanese daily al-Saffir, announced that the Egyptian president is due to pay an official visit to Iran in August to attend a summit meeting of the NAM.

Egypt currently holds presidency of the NAM and Mursi is due to deliver his chair to Iran in the August meeting in Tehran as Iran is due to chair the movement for the next three years.

“The Iran-Egypt relations are expected to witness an eye-catching growth in coming weeks,” the daily said.

In an interview with FNA late last month, Mursi underlined his enthusiasm for the further expansion of ties with Iran, and said resumption of formal relations between Tehran and Cairo would create a strategic balance in the region.

“The issue will create a strategic balance in the region,” Mursi told FNA hours before the final results of the presidential election was announced late in June.

Mursi stressed his eagerness to further develop ties with Iran, and said, “It is part of my agenda (as the first post-Mubarak president of Egypt).”

Ever since the collapse of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, the Iranian and Egyptian officials have voiced their interest in the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Salehi and his former Egyptian counterpart Nabil Al-Arabi in a meeting in Bali, Indonesia, which took place on the sidelines of a NAM ministerial meeting, conferred on ways to promote the bilateral relations between Tehran and Cairo, and stressed the need for continued consultations in this regard.