Quartet envoy Tony Blair met Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil in Cairo on Saturday for talks on the "difficulties" facing the Middle East peace process, MENA state news agency said.

The former British prime minister was also scheduled to hold discussions with Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr during his brief visit, it said.

An Egyptian court on Saturday ordered the reinstatement of a former police chief who had been charged alongside toppled president Hosni Mubarak with killing demonstrators but was acquitted.

The official MENA news agency said the court ordered that Omar Faramawi, who was formerly responsible for security at the Six October area near the capital and was also a deputy interior minister, be reinstated at his ministry post.

A television channel chief and presenter denied calling for the murder of President Mohammed Morsi when his trial on incitement charges opened in the Egyptian capital on Saturday.

"I merely criticized President Morsi," Tawfiq Okasha told judges at the court appearance, an Agence France Presse journalist reported.

Former premier Ahmed Shafiq denounced on Thursday as "political" a travel ban which may lead to his arrest upon returning to Egypt, in remarks to the Abu Dhabi-based Arabic Skynews channel.

"This is a political decision that has no legal basis," Shafiq said in an interview conducted in Dubai, adding that he would not hesitate to return to Egypt when "it is necessary."

Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Egypt's Mohammed Morsi on Thursday discussed the Syrian conflict and their states' severed diplomatic ties in their first-ever bilateral meeting, an official said.

"They emphasized the need to solve the Syria crisis via diplomacy and to prevent foreign intervention," Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian told Iran's Arabic-language broadcaster Al-Alam.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday said he expected the Egyptian army to withdraw its reinforcements from the Sinai Peninsula at the end of its operation to root out Islamist militants.

"They must act against terror and if they have to bring in troops, let them do so. And when it ends, they must take them out," Barak said in an interview with Israel's army radio.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem accused Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi of using his speech at the Non-Aligned summit in Tehran on Thursday to incite further bloodshed in Syria.

Morsi's speech condemning the regime in Damascus, prompting a walkout by the Syrian delegation, amounted to "interference in Syria's internal affairs and ... incites continued bloodshed in Syria," Muallem said, quoted on state television.

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi agrees that there can be no political solution for Syria unless President Bashar Assad leaves power, the French presidency said Wednesday.

In a statement issued following a telephone conversation between Morsi and French President Francois Hollande, the Elysee said: "The two heads of state mainly raised the situation in Syria and observed that no political solution is possible without the departure of Bashar Assad."

Former premier Ahmed Shafiq, who left Egypt amid a corruption probe after losing to Mohammed Morsi in a bitterly fought presidential election, has been placed on a watchlist and given a travel ban, judicial sources said on Wednesday.

Shafiq, a former air force chief appointed prime minister by president Hosni Mubarak before his overthrow early last year, is under investigation for an allegedly illegal sale of state land to Mubarak's sons.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday urged Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi to warm relations with Israel by visiting Jerusalem.

"I was happy to hear Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi speak of Egypt's commitment to peace with Israel, to the Camp David peace accords and to the battle against terror," Lieberman said at a legal conference.