20091208
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt has stepped up efforts to clear millions of World War Two mines from prime north coast land in a $250 million demining project to ready the area for tourism, energy and agriculture investments, an official said.

Egypt says Allied and Axis armies left behind 20 percent of the world's remaining landmines and explosive war remnants around El Alamein, site of a decisive World War Two battle.

"This project opens a huge wide open gate to the future," said Fathy El Shazly, the Director of the Executive Secretariat for Demining and Development of the Northwest Coast. "Our project is, par excellence, a demining for development project."

The area slated for demining stretches along Egypt's Mediterranean coast from El Alamein toward the Libyan border. The overall development of the area is estimated to cost $10 billion, a government report on the demining project said.

With most of its roughly 77 million people crammed into a strip of land along the Nile valley and in its fertile Delta, Egypt wants to develop other areas such as the northern coast.

Already, beach resorts popular among wealthy Egyptians dot the northern Mediterranean coast, and both Egyptian and foreign developers have bought up mine-free land in nearby areas.

The cleared land will be allocated to tourism, oil and natural gas, renewable energy, and agriculture, Shazly said in his Cairo office, where dismantled landmines sit for display.

Shazly, who is running the project that has UNDP backing, said he planned to clear all the mines in the area -- approximately 248,000 hectares of otherwise pristine coastline and desert hinterland -- within five or six years.