Iran said it was joining officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey for a four-way "contact group" meeting in Cairo looking at ways to calm the conflict in Syria.

Iran said it was joining officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey for a four-way "contact group" meeting in Cairo looking at ways to calm the conflict in Syria.

An Iranian deputy foreign minister, Hussein Amir Abdollahian, had left Tehran for the Egyptian capital to take part in the meeting, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Iran's Al-Alam Arabic-language broadcaster.

The meeting would be the first of a "contact group" on Syria proposed by Egypt's new president, Mohammad Mursi, at an August summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Saudi Arabia that suspended Syria's membership.

"Iran's participation in this meeting is within the framework of solving the Syrian crisis and to listening to the Egyptian proposal. Iran will use this opportunity to provide its views, in addition to those of the other countries to this group," Mehmanparast said.

The chairman of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy commission, Aladin Borujerdi, was quoted by the Al-Alam as saying that Iran wanted to see the contact group expanded to give it "better balance," suggesting Iraq.

The report of the contact group meeting in Cairo came as the newly appointed U.N. and Arab League peace envoy on Syria, Al-Akhdar Al-Ibrahimi, was to meet Egyptian and League officials in the Egyptian capital before heading to Damascus.

Ibrahimi's mission begins with key U.N. Security Council members, the United States and Russia, split on how to tackle the security situation in the Arab Republic.