The Egyptian government is anxious that the "tragic" case of murdered PhD student Giulio Regeni should not harm Egypt's ties with Italy, foreign minister Sameh Shoukry said on Friday.
''We don't want this tragic case to damage our relations with Italy," Shoukry told the Mediterranean Dialogues summit taking place in Rome through Saturday.
Regeni's unsolved 2016 abduction, torture and murder is the first case in which an Egyptian chief prosecutor has allowed a joint investigation with foreign prosecutors, Shoukry noted.
''We encourage cooperation between prosecutors' offices," Shoukry said, claiming that Egypt's prosecutor's office "has autonomy from the government."
Egypt will "do everything possible" to solve Regeni's murder "in a way that is satisfactory for everyone", Shoukry earlier told the summit.
Regeni's badly tortured and mutilated body was found on Cairo's outskirts in early February last year, ten days after he vanished on 25 January while heading to a friend's party in the centre of the city.
No far, no arrests have been made in the case. Italy withdrew its ambassador to Egypt for 15 months in protest at a lack of progress in the investigation.
Italy’s Senate voted in June last year to halt supplies to Egypt of spare parts for F16 warplanes over Regeni's unsolved murder, prompting threats of retaliation from Egypt.