ATHENS Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa has invited his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi to visit Cairo during the second-half of this month, Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram Al-Arabi reported. The state-run magazine said the invitation was conveyed during a meeting between the two foreign ministers at the sideline of the G-8 Islamic meeting in Dhaka, Bangladesh, last week. Informed Egyptian sources told the weekly that the meeting between Kharrazi and Amr Moussa contributed in removing a number of hurdles in normalisation of ties between Cairo and Tehran. The sources expect that full diplomatic relations between the two Muslim countries would be restored in the second-half of this year.

Currently Cairo-Tehran diplomatic ties are restricted on the level of interests section. Top officials of the two countries are to meet in the near future to remove some remaining differences and to prepare the protocol of cooperation and normalisation which will be signed by the foreign ministers of Egypt and Iran when they meet, added Al-Ahram Al-Arabi. (IRNA)