Image Credit: AFP
CAIRO: Egypt hosted the leaders of Turkey and Iran for a summit of eight Muslim-majority countries on Thursday, against a backdrop of regional turmoil including the conflict in Gaza and unrest in Syria.
The gathering of the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation, also known as the Developing-8, also includes Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia.
A special session on Gaza and Syria will be held, and will be attended by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
The summit will see Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian meeting for the first time since Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad was ousted.
Turkey has historically backed the opposition to Assad, while Iran supported his rule.
Pezeshkian, who arrived in Cairo on Wednesday, is the first Iranian president to visit Egypt since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who visited in 2013.
Ahead of his departure from Tehran, he said the summit was an opportunity for Muslim countries to “bring our views closer together and this can have a huge effect on the regional diplomacy and interactions”.
Relations between Egypt and Iran have been strained for decades, but diplomatic contacts have intensified since Cairo became a mediator in the war in Gaza.
Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi visited Egypt in October, while his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty travelled to Tehran in July to attend Pezeshkian’s inauguration.
Ahead of the summit, the Iranian top diplomat said he hoped it would “send a strong message to the world that the Israeli aggressions and violations in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria” would end “immediately”.
Turkey’s Erdogan, who was in Egypt earlier this year, will also attend, according to the Turkish presidency.
Erdogan will hold discussions with the summit leaders on trade as well as Gaza and Lebanon, which saw a year-long war between Israel and Hezbollah that ended with a fragile ceasefire on November 27.
In February, Erdogan was in Egypt, where he and President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and discussed economic cooperation as well as regional conflicts.
Established in 1997, the D-8 aims to foster cooperation among member states, spanning regions from Southeast Asia to Africa.
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