An Egyptian diplomat said Wednesday that his country's diplomatic mission in Iraq will not leave the country under any circumstances and will never respond to any pressures to end its work there, after a blast targeted the Egyptian Consulate in Baghdad this week. "We will stay in Iraq whatever happens," Sherif Kamal Shahin, the Egyptian envoy in Baghdad, said Wednesday, adding that the main aim of the extremists is to terrorise them, not to support Iraq. "I say to them this will never happen. We will complete our mission in Iraq," Shahin was quoted Wednesday by the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) as saying. The Egyptian envoy lauded the Iraqi guards who sacrificed their lives to prevent terrorists from getting into the Egyptian Consulate. "We owe much to those Iraqi heroes," Shahin said. On Saturday, four Egyptian employees at the Egyptian consulate were injured as around 41 people died in suicide car bomb attacks on the Iranian, Egyptian and German embassies in the Mansour suburb of Baghdad. President Hosni Mubarak appointed Shahin as Egypt's new Ambassador to Iraq less than six months ago, a post that had remained vacant for four years after Egyptian Chargé d'Affaires Ihab el-Sherif was kidnapped and slain in Baghdad in 2005. Shahin said that Egypt is determined to deepen its friendly ties and strong co-operation with Iraq.
