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Mubarak, Schroeder Deal with German Hostages in Egypt
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Wednesday called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to deal with the issue of four German tourists being held as hostages in southern Egypt.
During the telephone conversation, Schroeder called for efforts to secure the release of the four German tourists held by an Egyptian tour guide in the resort of Luxor, 500 kilometers south of Cairo, Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported, without giving further details.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry is continuing intensive contacts with the Egyptian embassy in Berlin and the German embassy in Cairo, as well as the security authorities to follow up the developments of the crisis, MENA said.
The Egyptian guide, identified as Ibrahim Said Mussa, who works with the Express travel agency, kidnapped the four Germans Monday evening in Luxor as a bargaining chip in a child-custody dispute with his estranged German wife.
Mussa has complained that the German embassy in Cairo has been refusing to give him a visa in the last nine months to visit his family in Germany at his wife's request.
His wife, whom he met in Luxor as a tour guide and married 10 years ago, left Egypt last June with their children, he said.
Mahmoud Khalaf, chairman of Luxor's supreme council, dismissed on Wednesday as "groundless" earlier reports that the Egyptian abductor threatened to kill the hostages if his demand to win custody of his sons is turned down.
Khalaf said that the four captives were "safe and healthy" and were expected to be freed "soon."
He denied that Egyptian police were ready to storm into the apartment where the four were being held in Luxor, saying that the authorities are continuing peaceful negotiations with Mussa.
Local officials also ruled out that the kidnapping has adversely affected Egypt's tourism industry, saying that there were no political motives behind the incident and it was "purely a personal matter."
The tourism industry, one of Egypt's major hard currency earners, was hit hard in the 1990s when Islamic militants launched attacks on foreign tourists in an attempt to topple the secular government and enforce strict Islamic rule.
In November 1997, 58 foreign tourists were killed by Islamic extremists in Luxor. Since then, Egyptian authorities have tightened security measures and the country has not seen major violent acts.
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