CAIRO (Reuters) - The president of the Shi'ite Islamic Republic of Iran will court Egypt's top Sunni Muslim cleric at al-Azhar university on Tuesday in a historic trip pointing to Tehran's efforts to improve ties with an Arab state now run by an Islamist.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be the first Iranian head of state to visit Egypt since the 1979 Iranian revolution, which led to a rupture in diplomatic relations between two of the most influential states in the Middle East. He is due to attend a two-day Islamic summit in Cairo that begins on Wednesday.