President Hosni Mubarak said Wednesday that attacks by Muslim extremists on foreigners has caused a one-third plunge in tourism, Egypt's biggest earner of foreign currency.
He vowed that a recent crackdown on radical fundamentalists would crush the movement, but he conceded no security measures can guarantee full protection.The extremists, who stepped up violence against police and Christian Copts earlier this year, began attacking foreigners to embarrass the government and cut into the $3 billion tourists spend in Egypt. A British tourist was killed and two were wounded in October. Five Germans were wounded in November.
The radicals are trying to overthrow Egypt's secular government and replace it with an Iran-style religious state. Their number is estimated at 200,000, although only about 10,000 of them are believed to be violent.
In an indication of Mubarak's concern about the effects of rising Muslim violence, he discussed the situation with reporters for about an hour Wednesday, an unusually long session with the press.
He said the number of foreign tourists had dropped about one-third since summer, which is a blow to the government's hopes of expanding the business to $5 billion in revenues by 1994.
Mubarak said a nationwide security dragnet that began Dec. 8 had caught 90 percent of the Islamic militants.