No recognition

CAIRO dismissed reports that it would be reopening its embassy in Baghdad anytime soon. "Egypt's position has not changed on that issue," Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said on Saturday. "We do not recognise the current [Iraqi] Governing Council."

Since the outbreak of the war against Iraq in March, Egypt has limited its representation in Baghdad to an office for the Consular Affairs of Egyptians living there.

Egypt refuses to recognise the council -- which was formed in July -- as the legal representative of the Iraqi people. Along with several other Arab capitals, Cairo has welcomed the body as a mere "step" in the right direction.

During a telephone call with his Kuwaiti counterpart Mohamed Al-Sabah on Monday, Maher reiterated the same message. He also welcomed Security Council Resolution 1500 on Iraq, which sets up a UN mission there, but added that there has to be a more rapid movement "towards the establishment of a legitimate government in Iraq". While signalling their willingness to receive members of the governing body, and open a dialogue with them, Egyptian officials have also said that they will deal with these members only in their personal capacity.

Journalist disappears

REDA Hilal, assistant chief editor of Al-Ahram, has been missing since 11 August with apparently no clue regarding his whereabouts. Security sources said they were investigating the case, but were unable to determine whether his disappearance was personally, criminally or politically motivated.

Hilal, a 46-year-old bachelor, was last seen by his colleagues at the paper earlier on the same day of his disappearance. The attendant at Hilal's downtown apartment building said he saw Hilal being driven home by an Al- Ahram vehicle. The journalist then asked the attendant to get him juice from a nearby vendor.

It seems Hilal had also ordered a kebab meal delivered to his home at around the same time. By the time both the kebab delivery man and the attendant arrived with Hilal's orders, no one was home, and a lock had been placed on the front door of his apartment.

The next day Hilal's brother opened the flat only to find nothing out of place other than the fact that the apartment's windows were left wide open.

Police played down the possibility that Hilal had been targeted because of his weekly opinion columns. He was, undeniably, a controversial writer whose unconventionally and often daring views on such issues as the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, and on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict made him the target of criticism by other political commentators.

Interior Minister Habib El-Adli is closely monitoring the investigations being conducted by the security bodies involved in the case. Police said that Hilal did not voluntarily leave the country via any of its air, land or sea borders.

The Press Syndicate also expressed its concern in a statement which urged "the security bodies to solve the mystery" of the missing journalist as soon as possible.

Tourism boom

LAST month's unprecedented increase in tourist arrivals caught tourism officials -- who were assuming that the sector would not begin recovering before autumn -- by surprise, reports Rehab Saad .

According to statistics released by the Interior Ministry's passport department and the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, 623,000 tourists came to Egypt in July 2003, a 26 per cent increase over the same period last year.

Tourist nights in July also increased by a whopping 78.7 per cent over the same period last year, reaching about 4.9 million nights. Saudi Arabia topped the ten main markets that export tourism to Egypt with 64,725 tourists, followed by Italy, Germany, Israel, Libya, England, Palestine, Russia, the Benelux and Poland.

From January to July 2003, 2.9 million tourists visited Egypt, representing an increase of 6.5 per cent over the same period last year. They spent about 19.8 million nights, an increase of 14.3 per cent over the same period last year.

"These statistics show that Egyptian tourism was able -- thanks to the support of the political leadership and the government -- to transcend all the negative impacts of the war on Iraq in just three months," said Tourism Minister Mamdouh El-Beltagui. El-Beltagui said this was "a new indication that Egyptian tourism might drop, but it bounces back and recovers rapidly".

El-Beltagui said the figures repudiated the ministry's conservative expectations regarding the sector's recovery after the war on Iraq. The minister indicated that as long as there were no more crises in the region this year, Egypt was expecting a good deal of autumn and winter tourist traffic as well.

Dangerous driving

IN ONE of the worst traffic accidents of this year, a bus on its way from Cairo to the southern province of Assiut collided with a truck on Tuesday at dawn. The two vehicles were then hit by two cars travelling in opposite directions on the Cairo-Upper Egypt highway, causing the vehicles to flip over and burst into flames. The accident left 22 people, including two infants, dead and 38 others injured.

Most of the victim's bodies were charred, with authorities only able to identify five of the dead (two infants and three children).

Preliminary investigations indicated that the accident occurred when the bus driver dozed off at the wheel.

Fever contained

A MINOR outbreak of Rift Valley fever in northern Egypt has been contained, according to health officials, who said there had been 13 confirmed cases of the fever in Kafr El- Sheikh, a rural area about 200 kilometres north of Cairo. Three people were reported to have died from the disease.

On Sunday, Health Minister Mohamed Awad Tageddin said that no new cases had appeared. He also said that the first cases were discovered in late July, although the outbreak was not reported until this week.

Rift Valley fever -- which is transmitted from livestock to humans via mosquitoes -- causes diarrhea, nausea and internal bleeding that can result in death. A drug called ribavarin is used to treat the condition.

Compiled by Shaden Shehab