IRAN AND EGYPT FAILED TO RESTORE RELATIONS, AGREED TO DISAGREE.
By a special Correspondent
CAIRO 26th Feb. (IPS) Egyptian President Hosni Mobarak received Saturday the Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and discussed a wide-range tour d’horizon but the resumption of relations between the two nations, diplomatic sources said.
The meeting was the highest level between Iranian and Egyptian officials since the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 and the unilateral breaking of Tehran-Cairo ties by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in protest to the American brokered normalisation of relations between Egypt and Israel signed a year before in Camp David.
"The talks covered co-operation between our two countries on an international level as well as bilateral current economic and cultural relations" Kharrazi told reporters after the talks, but did not mentioned diplomatic ties.
Contrary to what was reported earlier by some Tehran press, Mr. Kharrazi was not carrying any letter from the Iranian President for his Egyptian counterpart.
Highly informed sources told Iran Press Service in Tehran that though such a letter, a diplomatic routine was prepared at the presidential office, but Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the fundamentalist leader of the Islamic Republic opposed the idea, on the ground that Cairo has not change changed its policies concerning Israel and the moribund Middle East Peace Process (MEPP).
The Iranian minister arrived in Cairo Saturday to take part at the "D-8" Summit that started Sunday.
Formed in 1997 under the initiative of the then Turkish Prime minister Necmettin Erbakan with the aim of promoting inter-Muslim economic and trade cooperation, the group includes Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Nigeria, representing some 800 millions people, but only a 4 percent share in world trade.
"Talks with President Mobarak included the issue of the Middle East in detail. We focused on the necessity of realising the full rights of the Palestinian people" Kharrazi said.
Tehran-Cairo ties have significantly warmed since June of last year when Khatami spoke for the first time on the phone with the President Mobarak.
Though Iran-Egypt relations improved markedly following the election of Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami in 1997, yet the two countries are diametrically opposed on a number of issues, including the Peace Process, ties with Israel and the naming of a Tehran street after Khaled Eslamboli, the murderer of the late Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat who received the deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Cairo, where he died and was buried in a mosque there.
The Egyptian Ra’is has made the changing of the name of Khaled Eslamboli a sine quoi none condition for resumption of ties with Iran.
Former Majles (parliament) Speaker Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, an advocate of Tehran-Cairo relations once said the name of the street could be removed "as simply" as it had been named after the killer of the late Sadat.
But his statement was immediately denounced by the conservatives who decorated some walls in Tehran with huge portraits of the islamist terrorist and had their thugs to attack the offices of an Iran-Egypt friendship society which had been set up by a group of influential Iranian politicians.
Vehemently opposed to the existence of the Jewish State, Iran is the main source of support for most Arab and Palestinian extremists groups opposed to the MEPP, particularly Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Most of Mr. Kharrazi’s press conference was centred on the situation in Middle East and attacking Israel and US policies of "hegemony" and "massacre" of Palestinians.
He also denounced the latest bombing of Iraqi targets near Baghdad as well as the Israeli-Turkish military and security co-operation, a pact that is also criticised by Cairo and Damascus.
D-8 leaders voiced their grievances about globalisation, with Mr. Mobarak observing in his inauguration address that open markets in today's world are "basically" accessible for the products of advanced countries while our exports are faced every day with new protectionist procedures, "overt or covert", that impede their access to the advanced countries' markets".
He said the D-8 should aim to double trade among its members to 7 percent of their total trade in the next five years.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikha Hasina, the outgoing D-8 chairwoman said the developing world had no choice but to "get on the global bandwagon" but warned at the same time "ignoring the political and social dimensions of globalisation has its cost".
She questioned whether industrialised countries were ready to open their markets and help bridge the "digital divide" threatening to marginalize developing countries further.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said the burden of debt servicing "erodes the will of a government to address the needs of its people" and threatens democracy in developing nations.
He accused developed countries of "lacking the political courage and will" to tackle the debt problem.
"For us in the developing world, globalisation will remain a phantom notion until we can perceive the benefits in the lives of our people," the Nigerian leader declared.
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, under fire for travelling to the Middle East and Africa amid ethnic massacres in Borneo where up to 400 people have been slain in the past week, said his country was heeding International Monetary Fund (IMF) precepts of free trade and free competition.
Iran's Foreign Minister, representing the embattled President Khatami, said the World Trade Organization had failed to meet the aspirations of developing countries and called for reform of the IMF and World Bank.
The summit is expected to approve a communiqué drawn up by D-8 foreign ministers on Saturday that demands a fairer deal for developing nations from globalisation.
The draft "Cairo Declaration," leaked to Egypt's state news agency on Saturday, voices concern that developing countries are unable to get a "fair share of the benefits of globalisation", stresses the private sector's role in development and urges the industrialised world to open its markets more fully to exports from developing countries. IRAN EGYPT D-8 26201