Tourists stay away from Mideast

GIZA, Egypt -- One camel driver just scowls when you ask him how's business. A napping guard sprawls against the gate to the pyramids, and the tourists inside -- their trips in progress or paid for by Sept. 11 -- seem to break a smile only when they talk about going home.

"It's very bad," says another camel driver at Giza's pyramids, Hussein Salama Tartour. He shakes his head and sits on a block of carved limestone thousands of years old, idle with no tourist passengers for his camel.

"From the problem until now, I've never seen one American," he says, referring to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "Bad people did something bad to America, and my luck's been broken ever since."

Cancellations for tour groups and hotels have been running as high as 85 percent in some Middle Eastern countries since Sept. 11.

Raising fears of flying and of further bloodshed, the attacks on the United States gravely threaten the multibillion-dollar tourism industry of the region, which accounts for 10 percent of the gross domestic product of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Iran and is vital throughout the region.

Lebanon's tourism attache in Cairo, Faisal Fitfat, said Mideast tourism is at its "lowest ebb since the end of the Gulf War" in 1991, with a 20 percent to 30 percent drop across the region.

He predicted visits will fall by 90 percent from normal levels if the United States strikes back, possibly using the region as a staging area for operations against Osama bin Laden.