Cairo  - The Egyptian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned Iran's chief diplomat in Cairo to deliver a formal protest at an Iranian officials' mockery of Egyptian claims to have uncovered a Hezbollah cell in the country.

Zarqani Mohammed, Egypt's assistant foreign minister for Asian affairs, summoned the head of the Iranian interests section in Cairo to deliver a letter conveying Egypt's "strong and total rejection" of Iranian "intervention in Egypt's internal affairs," the Foreign Ministry said in statement released Tuesday.

After Egypt claimed to have uncovered a Hezbollah cell in the country earlier this month, Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, described the allegations as "ridiculous and idiotic."

"The government and people of Egypt totally reject this intervention," Mohammed said in Tuesday's statement. "Egypt cannot stand silent in the face of such attitudes."

Iran and Egypt have not maintained full diplomatic relations since Egypt granted asylum to the deposed Shah after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Iran maintains a diplomatic mission in Cairo in lieu of an embassy.

Despite periodic, tentative overtures, relations between the Middle East's two most populous countries have been strained in recent years by Egyptian suspicion over Iran's nuclear programme and by the two countries' differing positions over the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

Iran has supported Hezbollah with training, funding and weapons and has openly voiced its support for Hamas. Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, has positioned itself as a mediator between Israelis and Palestinians and among rival Palestinian factions.

Commentators in Egypt's government press have decried what they routinely call "Iranian meddling" in the region via proxies such as Hezbollah, and Egyptian politicians have often obliquely referred to "interference by non-Arab parties" in the region. (dpa)