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Cairo: Egypt has said it would wait until security conditions improved before it returned an ambassador to Baghdad, despite US requests for Arab countries to do more to support the Iraqi government.
Militants kidnapped and killed Egypt's ambassador to Iraq in 2005.
"Egypt will not return its ambassador in Iraq before sufficient security guarantees are provided," foreign minister Ahmad Aboul Gaith said in remarks carried by state news agency Mena.
US pressure
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Thursday she would press Iraq's Arab neighbours hard next week to do more to support the government in Baghdad and shield it from the "nefarious influences" of Iran.
Rice, set to attend a conference of Iraq's neighbours in Kuwait on Tuesday, said her message would be for Arab states to fulfil their promises to increase diplomatic, economic, social and cultural ties with Baghdad.
Egypt has said it will send a deputy foreign minister to the Kuwait meeting.
Resistance
Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbours, notably Saudi Arabia, have so far resisted US pressure to open embassies in Baghdad, which Washington argues would bolster the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki and help counter the influence of neighbouring Shiite Iran.
Iraq is an Arab country while Iran's roots are Persian. Both countries, however, have majority Shiite populations.
Iraq's foreign minister called earlier this year for Arab states to send ambassadors to his country, saying it was "embarrassing" most had failed to do so five years after Saddam Hussain was toppled from power.
Many Arab diplomats have stayed away from Baghdad since a suicide car bomber attacked the Jordanian embassy in August 2003, killing 17 people.
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