Egyptian ambassador to Baghdad to assume post in 2 months- ministry

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said that the new Egyptian ambassador to Baghdad will assume his duties in a matter of two months, four years after the assassination of Egypt’s former envoy to the Iraqi capital and the subsequent closure of its embassy. “The Egyptian ambassador to Iraq, Sharif Kamal Shahin, who has been appointed by a presidential decree, will assume his duties in Baghdad in a couple of months, or even less,” the head of the media department in the ministry, Haydar al-Barak, told IraqiNews.com news agency by phone. “The ministry has prepared a building inside the Green Zone to be the headquarters of the Egyptian embassy in Baghdad…,” Barak noted. On Tuesday (June 16), an official spokesperson for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Egypt would send an ambassador to Iraq for the first time since its envoy was killed by al-Qaeda gunmen in 2005. The ministry described Shahin as a veteran diplomat, who assumed posts in Tokyo, Athens and Beirut. Shahin, who is to leave his job as to Zambia, will open the mission “in the coming weeks” accompanied by a diplomatic team, the spokesperson noted. Cairo has had no official diplomatic representative in Iraq since the July 2005 abduction and murder by al-Qaeda of its chargé d’affaires in Baghdad, Ihab al-Sharif. In October 2008, Ahmed Abul Gheit made the first visit by an Egyptian foreign minister to Iraq in 18 years. SS (S) 1