Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said yesterday that an international
ministerial meeting on Iraq will be held in Egypt in early May.
Zebari told a news conference that Iraq's neighboring countries as well as
Bahrain and Egypt, alongside with the five permanent members of the UN Security
Council and industrialized nations of the Group-8, will meet in Egypt's Red Sea
resort of Sharm el-Sheikon May 3-4 to discuss the situation in Iraq.
The meeting, supposed to be held in Turkey's Istanbul in early April, will be
held in the first week of May to follow up earlier talks aimed at stabilizing
the war-torn country.
An international conference was held in Baghdad last month.
Zebari did not give the reasons for the change of the time and the site of
the meeting, but said that the Iraqi government wanted it to be in Egypt,
leaving the door open for another meeting to beheld in Turkey.
"We have chosen Egypt to be the place of the meeting. We still have work to
do like agreeing on the meeting's agenda," Zebari told the reporters.
Meanwhile, an international conference on a five-year Iraqi reconstruction
plan will also be held in Egypt at the same time, revealed the Iraqi foreign
minister.