Iran Sends Deputy Foreign Minister to Cairo Meeting on Syria

(FNA)- Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir Abdollahian is due to represent Iran in a quadrilateral meeting with senior Turkish, Egyptian and Saudi diplomats in Cairo later this week to discuss ways of ending bloodshed in Syria.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry announced on Monday that Deputy Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian, a career diplomat, will attend the quartet meeting to discuss the Syrian crisis with senior envoys from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the hosting country, Egypt.

The Egyptian foreign ministry has announced that the meeting would be held in Cairo later this week.

The initiative for forming the quadrilateral contact group on Syria was put forward by Egypt's first post-revolution President Mohammad Mursi at a recent emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The proposal went under further discussions during a recent phone talk between the Iranian and Egyptian foreign ministers and was also a topic of discussions between senior Iranian and Egyptian officials on the sidelines of the 16th heads-of-state summit meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran late in August.