Iran's deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that Iran supports Egypt President Mohamed Morsi's initiative to bring an end to the Syrian crisis, the state-run MENA news agency reported on Sunday. In press statement following a meeting with Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, Abdollahian said "Egypt and Iran have the same position and we all believe that only solution for the Syrian crisis is the political one." Abdollahian commended an invitation that was floated by President Morsi during a recent Arab summit in Qatar to hold a mini-summit to discuss the Syrian crisis. "President Morsi had a previous suggestion about the quartet group on Syria, comprising Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and we continue dialogue within the same framework," Abdollahian said. "We welcome all ideas revolving around a political solution," he added. The Iranian diplomat termed the talks with Amr as "fruitful," reiterating that the Egyptian-Iranian relations are "in a good development." The visit to Cairo aims at tackling the future of the bilateral ties, the developments in the region and holding further talks with the United Nations-Arab League joint envoy to Syria Lakhadr Brahimi, Abdollahian said. For his part, Amr warned that "the killing and destruction that took place in a daily basis in Syria would deteriorate the regional situation." Amr stressed that best interest for all regional powers is exerting more efforts to put an end to the crisis as soon as possible. Amr, who was handed by Abdollahian a letter from his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi, underscored the necessity for Iran to contribute to reaching the required political solution to stop the bloodshed in Syria. Abdollahian arrival in Cairo on Saturday, which coincided with the first flight launched from Cairo to Tehran in 34 years, as the bilateral ties started to be gradually developed after the 2011 upheaval that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak. The relations between Cairo and Tehran were cut off for over three decades after Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Both now ruled by Islamist-oriented administrations, Egypt and Iran started to slightly normalize relations despite a number of challenges including different stances on Syrian administration and different ideological perception of religion between Egypt's Sunnis and Iran's Shiites, besides Iran's tension with a number of Gulf states with which Egypt has major interests. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi visited Tehran last August to attend the Nonaligned Movements (NAM) conference, becoming the first Egyptian president to visit Iran in decades. Similarly, in February, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has become the first Iranian president to visit Egypt in 34 years by attending the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Cairo. Xinhuanet
