'Attacks won't harm tourism'

2005-05-01 21:28

Dubai - The head of Egypt's main hotel group sought on Sunday to play down the impact of attacks by Islamist militants on his country's vital tourism industry, saying they were "isolated incidents" perpetrated by "isolated people."

"In a week or two, the whole incident will be totally over," Samih Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Hotels and Development, told AFP in Dubai, where he was attending a conference on the hotel industry in the Arab world.

"It's not al-Qaeda trying to topple the (Egyptian) regime... That's just an annoying thing," he said, referring to the network of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.

Egypt detained about 200 people and stepped up security around its tourist attractions on Sunday after Islamists targeted foreigners in two separate attacks in Cairo.

"People will take the thing in the right context," Sawiris said of Saturday's suicide bombing and shooting, which revived memories of a wave of Islamist violence that targeted tourists in Egypt in the 1990s.

"It's the same people, the same family, the same group... These are five or six people that got together," he said.

Sawiris dismissed comparisons between the latest attacks and those in 1997, the worst of which saw 62 people, including 58 foreign holidaymakers, killed in the southern city of Luxor.

At the time, "the world had not gotten used to the fact that there were crazy people in the world," he said.

But the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and last year's Madrid train bombings are "evidence that the crazy people exist all over the place," he added.

Sawiris said Egypt, which boasted eight million foreign tourists last year, was intent on reaching the 10-million mark in 2005.

Saturday's attacks followed a bombing in Cairo's main tourist bazaar last month that the authorities had described as an "isolated incident."

Two French nationals and an American died in the April 7 bombing, and those who died Saturday were reportedly linked to that attack.

Orascom, which was set up in 1950 by Onsi Sawiris, is active in the construction, tourism and hi-tech sectors. Apart from Egypt, Orascom Hotels and Development runs hotels in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

- AFP