From Reuters…

Egypt restores ties with Costa Rica, El Salvador

By Aziz El-Kaissouni

CAIRO, Sept 4- Egypt said on Monday it would re-establish formal diplomatic ties with Costa Rica and El Salvador following decisions by both countries to move their embassies in Israel to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem.

Costa Rica and El Salvador had been the only countries in the world with embassies in Jerusalem before they announced their separate decisions last month to pull their diplomatic missions from the city.

“In light of this step, the necessary procedures are currently being taken to restore diplomatic relations with the two countries,” Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told journalists.

Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, cut ties with Costa Rica and El Salvador in the 1980s after they opened embassies in Jerusalem, according to Egyptian state news agency MENA.

Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias announced the embassy move last month, followed shortly by El Salvador.

“It’s time to rectify an historic error that hurts us internationally and deprives us of almost any form of friendship with the Arab world, and more broadly with Islamic civilisation, to which a sixth of humanity belongs,” Arias said at the time.

Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. Israel considers the entire city its undivided and eternal capital. Palestinians want the eastern sector as capital of a future state.

Related link: Last embassy to leave Jerusalem