Cairo, Oct 31 /Rompres/ - Romania gives special importance to Egypt as a partner- and friendly state, Foreign Minister Adrian Cioroianu told a news conference on Wednesday, after meeting with Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

Cioroianu said Romania wants to resume its ties with the friends in the Arab world, whom it did not forget in the last 15 years, a time when Romania's 'priority was the accession to the European Union'.

'We hope that after our (EU) entry we may re-discover the traditional cooperation between our two states, which have had very good economic and political relations, despite the Bucharest Communist rule', the minister added.

Ahmed Aboul Gheit stressed that Egypt too wants to strengthen the 'strong, good and historic' relation with Romania and said Romania's 'strong' comeback to the region is welcome.

The Romanian tractors exported in the 1970s and 1980s speak of the very good image that Romania has in Egypt and the Arab world and of the need to make a comeback to this area, Cioroianu underscored. 'The Romanian tractors are appreciated and we continue to use them', the Egyptian foreign minister said, in turn.

According to sources with the Romanian Embassy in Cairo, there is in Egypt a very high demand of spare parts for nearly 60,000 Romanian-made tractors; this demand is only partially covered by several small Egyptian firms' moves to disassemble old tractors lying in the yards of the Romanian Communist-era farm cooperatives.

Speaking about Romania's political presence in the Arab area, Cioroianu announced the Foreign Ministry's wish to set up a multilateral group to include the Romanian ambassadors in Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Tehran that should draft, together with Arab fellow diplomats, a Romanian strategy for the region in the country's new capacity of a EU member state. The topics to be tackled by such strategy are, according to Cioroianu, security, refugees, economic issues and water resources.

The two foreign ministers also discussed the Near East and Middle East political files - Iraq, Lebanon, the crisis between Turkey and the Kurds, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Sudan and Darfur and the situation in Kosovo.

Special attention was paid to the Iranian nuclear file. 'We are in favour of an Iranian civil nuclear programme, but the interest of all the countries in the area is that the non-proliferation commitments be met, so as not to produce regional tensions. I have also understood the outlook of Egypt, which doesn't want weapons of mass destruction in the region, but it also wants some balance between the Iranian nuclear file and the relevant developments in Israel', the Romanian minister said.

Earlier in the day, Cioroianu met Speaker of the Egyptian National Assembly (the lower house of Parliament) Fatih Surour, while later on Wednesday he is scheduled to meet local business executives.

On Thursday, Cioroianu will pay a visit to the Governor of Alexandria and will meet the leadership of the Anna LindH Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures.