GENEVA, Dec 10: Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak declared on Wednesday that his country’s relations with Iran were normal following the first meeting of the two countries’ presidents since they broke diplomatic ties in 1980.

“Our relations with Iran are normal,” Mr Mubarak emphasized after talks with Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami in Geneva.

“President Khatami asked to see me, and that’s why I came,” he told journalists as he left the hotel following the encounter.

The severing of diplomatic ties in 1980 followed Cairo’s decision to give asylum to Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, who was toppled in the 1979 Iranian revolution, as well as the US-brokered Camp David peace accords the same year establishing peace between Egypt and Israel.

The two heads of state are in Geneva to take part in a UN conference on information technology. —AFP