CAIRO (AP) -- Arab League chief Amr Moussa urged the U.S. and Iran to continue their dialogue on Iraq, saying on Monday that the future of the country matters to all Arab nations.

The U.S. and Iran held groundbreaking ambassador-level talks last week in Baghdad, a meeting that had stirred concern among some Arabs that their countries may be left out of the loop on Iraq's future. Though it has a small Arab population, Iran is a majority Persian country.

"The (Iran-U.S.) dialogue is an active attempt to calm down the issues and solve the problems away from military conflict, and we hope that the dialogue will continue in favor of tranquility," Moussa said during a visit from Iraq's Sunni Arab vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi.

Al-Hashemi was in Egypt seeking help for his country.

"We are in dire need of help and cooperation to exchange views on how to end the Iraqi bottleneck," al-Hashemi told reporters.

He said the Iraqi government needed to do more to reconcile with individuals opposed to it, referring to minority Sunni groups battling the Shia-led government.

Egypt has expressed worries about the rise to power by Iraq's majority Shia Muslims after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime. Egypt and most other Arab countries in the Middle East are majority Sunni.

Al-Hashemi is scheduled to meet President Hosni Mubarak and other top Egyptian officials during his visit.