A nearby meeting between Mubarak and Khatami

The Iranian daily Bahar said on Tuesday that the Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will meet shortly on the sideline of the meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The paper quoted a well-informed source in Tehran as saying that in a telephone call made recently Mubarak expressed his desire to meet with President Khatami. The source added that it was agreed to hold the meeting in New York in Autumn on the sideline of the UN General Assembly.

On June 21 Mubarak made a telephone call to his Iranian counterpart in the first contact at that level between Cairo and Tehran since diplomatic relations between the two countries were severed 20 years ago.