Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Saturday that an international ministerial meeting on Iraq will be held in Egypt in early May.

Zebari told a news conference that Iraq's neighboring countries as well as Bahrain and Egypt, alongside with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and industrialized nations of the Group-8, will meet in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik on May 3-4 to discuss the situation in Iraq.

The meeting, supposed to be held in Turkey's Istanbul in early April, will be held in the first week of May to follow up earlier talks aimed at stabilizing the war-torn country.

An international conference was held in Baghdad last month.

Zebari did not give the reasons for the change of the time and the site of the meeting, but said that the Iraqi government wanted it to be in Egypt, leaving the door open for another meeting to be held in Turkey.

"We have chosen Egypt to be the place of the meeting. We still have work to do like agreeing on the meeting's agenda," Zebari told the reporters.

Meanwhile, an international conference on a five-year Iraqi reconstruction plan will also be held in Egypt at the same time, revealed the Iraqi foreign minster.

Source: Xinhua