Iran says will decide soon on Egypt meeting

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will announce soon whether it will take part in an international meeting in Egypt next week to discuss the conflict in Iraq, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Wednesday.

The meeting in early May is expected to be attended by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"We will announce our point of view regarding attending the ... meeting soon," Mottaki said during a joint news conference with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshiyar Zebari after talks in Tehran.

The news conference was aired on an Arabic-language television station and his comments in Farsi were dubbed into Arabic.

Zebari said: "We understand the position of the Islamic Republic of Iran and that it has not taken a final decision."

Egypt is hosting the high-level meeting of a group of countries that includes Syria, Turkey and the United States to discuss how to stop the violence in Iraq. The conference is a follow-up to one in Baghdad in March.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said earlier on Wednesday, during a visit to Kuwait, he hoped Iran would attend the meeting.

An Iranian newspaper reported earlier this month that Iran might not attend if U.S. forces did not release five Iranians they were holding in Iraq.

"I made clear to ... my brother Manouchehr that we will not be able, as an Iraqi government, to give any guarantees about this subject, but our efforts will continue," Zebari said.

"We are optimistic that they will be released in the future but I have no guarantees really and I do not wish for this matter to be linked to our request as an Iraqi government to the Islamic Republic to attend the (Egypt) meeting."

Iran, which attended the March conference, had said it would decide after this week's talks with Zebari whether it would attend the meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.