CAIRO, July 23 (AFP) - Egypt is "absolutely not" considering troops to Iraq, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said Friday in reaction to the kidnapping of an Egyptian diplomat in the stife-torn country.
Egypt "reaffirms it is absolutely not considering sending Egyptian forces or soldiers to Iraq," he said in a statement received by AFP.
"The statement by the Egyptian foreign minister is in reaction to the news of the kidnapping of an Egyptian diplomat by an Iraqi group," the statement elaborated.
The minister stressed that the abducted diplomat had been working to help "build brotherly relations linking the peoples of Iraq and Egypt."
Mohammed Mamdouh Hilmi Kotb, the third most senior official at the Egyptian mission in the Iraqi capital, was grabbed earlier in the day.
Arab television Al-Jazeera broadcast a tape showing a man identified as Kotb dressed in white shirt with blue stripes cowering before six masked armed men dressed head-to-toe in black with white bandanas around their foreheads.
Kotb was purportedly kidnapped by a group called the Lions of Allah in response to what they described as "Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif's offer to Iraq of his country's security expertise."