( dpa ) - Iran was on the verge of normalizing diplomatic relations with Egypt, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Monday.
"We are just waiting for our Egyptian friends to proclaim their final readiness," Mottaki said in a press briefing in Tehran.
Also President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is eager to upgrade bilateral ties and several times stressed that if Egypt agreed to normalize diplomatic relations "today," Iran would send an ambassador to Cairo "tomorrow."
Despite efforts in the last 10 years by both Ahmadinejad and his predecessor Mohammad Khatami to resume full diplomatic relations with Egypt, the government in Cairo has been hesitant to do so.
The two Muslim countries have had no diplomatic ties since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution due to Egypt's Camp David Accord with Israel in 1978.
One of the main disputes between the two states was the naming of a Tehran street after the assassin of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, which Iran later agreed to change to Intifada (uprising) Street in reference to the Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
In return, Tehran wants Egypt to change the name of a street in Cairo named after the late Iranian king Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi who is also buried in the al-Rifai mosque in the Egyptian capital.