Egypt, Iraq upgrade diplomatic missions

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) -- Iraq and Egypt have turned their interest sections back into embassies for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War, but have yet to restore full diplomatic relations, an Iraqi diplomat said on Wednesday.

"The Iraqi interest section is now an embassy," Homam Alalousi, head of the Iraqi diplomatic mission in Cairo, told Reuters, adding that the Iraqi flag had been hoisted over his offices on Sunday.

"That does not mean that Iraqi-Egyptian diplomatic ties have been reinstated," he said. "It's merely a step towards that."

The state-owned Cairo daily Al-Gomhoriyah said Alalousi's counterpart in Baghdad, Sherif Reehan, had hoisted the Egyptian flag over the Egyptian diplomatic mission there on Tuesday.

The two countries had maintained interests sections under Indian embassy auspices since cutting diplomatic ties during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis, when Egypt sent troops to back a U.S.-led coalition that drove Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait.

In recent months Egypt has boosted trade with Iraq under the U.N. oil-for-food programme, sent four planes with humanitarian supplies to Baghdad and called for an end to U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

"Iraqi-Egyptian relations are good and have been developing for a while," Alalousi said.

President Hosni Mubarak voiced hope that Iraq would eventually return to the Arab fold. "It's only a matter of time, nothing more," he told reporters on Wednesday.

The upgrading of diplomatic missions followed a weekend visit to Cairo by Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, on a tour of Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Qatar.

Egypt, while upset at the suffering sanctions have caused to ordinary Iraqis, wants Baghdad to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions on scrapping weapons of mass destruction.

Nor do the two countries see eye to eye on Middle East peacemaking. Iraq criticized last month's Arab summit hosted by Mubarak which denounced Israel for excessive use of force against Palestinians but left the door open to peace talks.

Baghdad said the summit should have taken a stronger stand, calling for a jihad (holy struggle) against the Jewish state to liberate occupied Palestinian land.

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