Solar eclipse draws tourists to Libya

TRIPOLI - Thousands of Western visitors are flooding into Libya to view a solar eclipse due on Wednesday in the largest tourist event ever held in the long-isolated north African country, officials said.

The big oil exporting country hopes the influx of foreigners to remote viewing stations in its spectacular desert outback will boost a fledgling tourist industry that is anticipating a boom as a thaw in ties with the West erodes years of isolation.

Deputy Tourism Minister Arebi Mazoz told Reuters Libya had issued visas to 7,000 tourists from 53 nationalities, as well as a number of scientists from the US National Aeronautics Space Administration who would help Libyan experts study the eclipse.

Ahmed Aziz, head of the tourism ministry's information department, said it would be the largest and biggest event in the history of Libyan tourism.

Four private firms have been commissioned to provide on-site water tanks, tents, washrooms, food, drink, transport for the visitors, most of whom are paying the equivalent of at least 2,000 euros ($4019) each for a four-day stay.

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly in front of the sun and its shadow is cast on earth. Wednesday's eclipse will be visible in Brazil, west and north Africa and central Asia.

The longest view of the eclipse - four minutes and seven seconds - will be visible at Libya's Wao Namus settlement near the Chadian border 2,000km south of Tripoli.

Others will go to Jalo oasis 500 km south of Benghazi where the eclipse will last for four minutes and three seconds, and to Albordi close to the Egyptian border.

Libya cast off more than a decade of international ostracism in 2003 when it accepted responsibility and began paying compensation for the bombing of airliners over Scotland and Niger in 1988 and 1989.

The country hopes the eclipse event will stir interest in its other attractions - Roman and Greek ruins, prehistoric desert sites and a fledgling diving sector along its unspoiled Mediterranean desert coastline.

Libya has a long way to go to catch up with north African tourism hotspots Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, all of which attract six million tourists or more a year.

By some estimates Libya attracts less than half a million tourists annually.

But the country, which has forged agreements with European firms for the construction of tourism complexes on the coast, hopes it has an edge on its neighbours because its isolation may have lent it an element of mystery.

- REUTERS