President in Cairo to attend D-8 summit
Iranian president left Tehran for Cairo on Wednesday to take part in the summit of the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, which he called it an opportunity to bring the Islamic countries closer to each other.
Masoud Pezeshkian made the remarks before leaving Tehran.
Pezeshkian said meetings at this level are very effective for active diplomacy that can bring Islamic countries closer together economically, politically, culturally and socially.
Referring to his “good negotiations” with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia in November, the Iranian president described Egypt as a country with a great civilization and an influential country in the Islamic world.
“The deeper and more intimate we make our relations with Islamic countries, the more conspiracies against our country and other Islamic countries will be neutralized,” the Iranian president said.
The D-8 organization consists of eight developing countries, namely Iran, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt.
The D-8 was established in 1997 to improve cooperation between countries stretching from Southeast Asia to Africa.
Pezeshkian’s visit to Egypt is the first by an Iranian president to the African country in more than a decade.
Relations between Egypt and Iran have generally been fraught in recent decades but the two countries have stepped up high-level diplomatic contacts since the eruption of the Gaza crisis last year as Egypt tried to play a mediating role.