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Cyrene In a new sign of its determination to open up to the world, Libya plans to launch an ambitious project aimed at bringing environmentally sound tourism and sustainable development to its vast Green Mountain coastal region, an area rich in Greek and Roman antiquities in the east of the country.
"We started this project because in our [region] it is not common to talk about the environment or about gas [carbon] emissions. These [are seen] as the problems of Europe and north America," said Seif Al Islam Al Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. "But it is now time to join the developed countries and to show that in environmental and cultural issues we are civilised."
Surrounded by the imposing columns of the gymnasium of the ancient Greek city of Cyrene on the Mediterranean, Gaddafi recently told an audience of architects, international financiers and western journalists that the project would conserve the region's antiquities, provide jobs, develop renewable energy sources and improve the standard of living for the local population.
Libya, an oil-rich state, has been keen to improve ties with the west, and Al Islam, whom many believe is being groomed to succeed his father, has played a big role in that process.
The Green Mountain project, which backers say will create the world's first large-scale conservation and development area, is being billed as his initiative.
He has hired international experts such as the architects Foster and Partners to develop plans for the region. But his involvement is likely to fuel scepticism that the project is aimed more at helping the international rehabilitation of Libya than anything else. No announcements have been made about the cost of the project or a timeline for its implementation.
Sources involved in the launch said the project was still at the 'vision' stage, and work on it had only started two months ago.
According to the project's backers the first step will be the creation of an authority with a board of international expert trustees to manage the area.
"The Green Mountain is like the Côte d'Azur 100 years ago," said Stefan Behling, senior partner at Foster and Partners. "Tourism will come here, because it is unbelievably beautiful and it has the best antiquities. If we don't protect it now, in 50 years it could be all caput."
Behling presented plans for a region with controlled urban sprawl, wind and solar power, hotel and tourist facilities sited discreetly and the Mediterranean coastline kept free of construction.
Foster and Partners will also design the area's first three hotels to be built by a leading Libyan businessman, Hassan Tatanaki, who plans to invest up to $1 billion in the next two years.
But the lavish launch with foreign journalists brought in on chartered flights and housed in a specially constructed tent city in the shadow of the Temple of Zeus in Cyrene is bound to fuel doubts that this is aimed largely at polishing the image of Libya and Muammar Gaddafi.
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