Egypt's foreign ministry said its top diplomat Sameh Shoukri met on Monday with his counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on the sidelines of a UN conference on the global anti-nuclear weapons treaty.

In a statement, the ministry said Shoukri discussed Egyptian and Arab visions regarding nuclear non-proliferation, saying he insisted on the necessity of exerting efforts to make the Middle East free of nuclear weapons.

The meeting also included discussions on coordination on the nuclear issue within the nations of the Non-Aligned Movement currently chaired by Iran. 

Zarif will be the first to address the signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty at the conference.

Iran has recently made a breakthrough with Western countries on a nuclear agreement it hopes to sign before July, which – if concluded – would lift sanctions imposed on the country since 2005.

Egypt cut formal ties with Iran since the latter's 1979 revolution. A seeming warming of relations occurred during the brief rule of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi, when former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Egypt in 2013.

"Talks between both ministers involved more coordination between the different countries members of the Non-Aligned Movement in the framework of revising the Non-Proliferation Treaty to achieve the shared goals of the movement and reinforce the treaty's credibility," the statement read.

Iran has continually claimed that its nuclear program was peaceful and denied that it was aimed at acquiring nuclear weapons, as Western states have accused.

Egypt recently signed an agreement with Russia to build its first ever nuclear plant.