TEHRAN (IRNA/AFP) – The president of Iran’s Physical Education Organization (PEO), Mohammad Aliabadi, on Sunday accused some countries, including the United Kingdom and Egypt, of mixing politics with sports.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet session, Aliabadi said that the aforementioned countries called off the friendly games with Iran’s national soccer team, citing political problems as the main reason for their decisions.
“Despite this, we’re scheduled to play friendly games with a number of foreign teams from different parts of the world,” he said but didn’t mention any specific team.
Iran’s national soccer team were to play friendly matches with Charlton club of UK and Egyptian national football team but the games were cancelled by UK and Egypt.
The friendly matches were scheduled to warm-up the teams for second round of the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifications.
Meanwhile, Iranian Football Federation lodged an official complaint to world football governing body FIFA over the cancellation of friendly matches with teams from the UK and Egypt.
“The games were cancelled for political reasons,” Ali Kafashian said.
“A complaint was made over mixing politics and sports,” he said, noting that the federation is waiting for the response from FIFA.
The Egyptian Football Association said on Friday that a friendly match with Iran had been cancelled due to tensions over an Iranian film on the assassination of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, AFP reported.
“We have decided to cancel the match because of tensions in relations” between Cairo and Tehran following the airing of the documentary on the 1981 assassination, federation president Samir Zaher said.
“We have been in contact with the (Egyptian) foreign ministry during the last 10 days regarding the situation and we finally decided to cancel the match so it did not provoke in one way or another, further tensions,” he said.
The match was due to be played on August 20 in the United Arab Emirates.
The film, entitled “Assassination of a Pharaoh”, says Sadat was killed for signing the 1978 Camp David Accords that led to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, the first by an Arab country.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit earlier this month condemned the film.
Diplomatic ties between Egypt and Iran were severed in 1980, a year after the Islamic revolution, in protest at Egypt’s recognition of Israel, its hosting of the deposed shah and its support for Iraq during its 1980-1988 war with Iran.
Relations have recently warmed, with both countries signaling a willingness to restore ties. In January, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak held talks with Iran’s (former) parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, the first such high-level meeting in almost 30 years.