New Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi will attend an international conference on Iraq s reconstruction in Egypt next week, the ministry announced Saturday.

It would be the first overseas mission for Yang as the country s top diplomat after succeeding Li Zhaoxing who retired on Friday.

The seaside resort of Sharm El-Sheikh is hosting the reconstruction conference on May 3 and 4 to be followed by a widened ministerial meeting of countries neighboring Iraq which Yang was also due to attend, according to a statement on the foreign ministry s website.

Besides Iraq s neighbors, UN and European Union representatives and members of the Group of Eight were due to attend the conference to study means of stabilizing the situation in the violence-ravaged country.