TEHRAN, 8 January 2004 — Iran’s vice president said yesterday that talks with Egypt over restoring diplomatic ties, cut nearly a quarter of a century ago, were now in the final phase.

“The important steps have been completed. The decisions have been taken and they (the two sides) are in the process of seeing how to sort out the questions of protocol,” Mohammad Ali Abtahi told reporters.

He added that once the final issues of protocol had been settled, an “official declaration” would be made. On Tuesday, Abtahi said relations would be restored “in the coming days”. But Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher later indicated that no formal decision had yet been taken.

“Relations between the two countries are on the right track,” Maher told journalists in Cairo. He added that “contacts are continuing between the two sides and are progressing in the right direction” since a meeting between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Khatami in Geneva in December.

Iranian government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh was also less categorical yesterday, refusing to say when full ties would resume.

“What is most important is that the two countries wish to develop relations ... the process had been accelerated and we hope the discussions will achieve more positive results.”

However, Iran’s state IRNA news agency denied a report in Egypt’s Al-Ahram government daily that Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was expected in Cairo “in the coming days” to deliver an invitation for Mubarak to take part in a D-8 economic summit here next month.

“A visit by the foreign minister to Egypt is not on the agenda,” it cited a well-informed source as saying.

Full diplomatic ties between Iran and Egypt were severed in 1979. Iran on Tuesday lifted a key obstacle to a renewal of relations with Egypt when Tehran city council agreed to rename a city center street bearing the name of Khaled Eslamboli, who assassinated the then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

In Iran, the decision to rename the street “Intifada Avenue” — a tribute to the Palestinian uprising — was welcomed by reformist papers but raised eyebrows in the hard-line press.

The ultra-conservative Ya-Lessarat paper, mouthpiece of the Iranian Ansar Hezbollah vigilante group, blasted the move as a “capitulation”.

The hard-line Jomhuri Islami paper also blasted the city council, controlled by conservatives since municipal polls last February, as “a dark day for the council supposed to be made up of people loyal to Islamic values and revolutionary principles.”

In another development, Influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said yesterday Iran should not rush into patching up relations with its arch-foe the United States and called on Washington to apologize for its stance toward Tehran.

“One should not hurry in establishing relations with America. For establishing relations with America one must wait,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Rafsanjani as saying after a ceremony in Tehran.

Analysts say Rafsanjani remains a strong influence on Iranian foreign policy although he is no longer president.

US humanitarian aid to victims of Iran’s devastating Dec. 26 earthquake in Bam, including a temporary waiver on sanctions to ease the flow of donations, has produced a slight easing in the decades-old wall of mistrust.

Officials on both sides, including Rafsanjani, have noted “positive signs” in their dealings. US officials have spoken of a willingness to resume a limited dialogue — broken off by Washington last May — on specific issues.