Mubarak to open first concrete suspension bridge in Middle East within days

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak will within the coming few days open the Middle East's first concrete suspension bridge in the monument-rife Upper Egyptian city of Aswan.

Engineered as a sun boat to conform to the city's Pharaonic flair, the LE 105 million bridges was entirely constructed by Egyptian expertise and manpower.

President Mubarak chose the site of the bridge nine kms north of Aswan with a strategic purpose in mind: to stretch urban development 12 km to the north and to connect the present old Aswan to the new Aswan.

Aswan stretches over 1,800 feddans west of the Nile and can accommodate a population of 100,000 till the year 2007.

Minister of Transport Hamdi El Shayab Sunday said the bridge is to ease the traffic flow up the old Aswan Dam built in 1952.

The new suspension bridge, a prominent landmark in the process of the development of the Aswan governorate, will link Aswan to the governorates of the new valley and the Red Sea and will serve to transport agricultural products from Toshka and Shark Al Awyant to the Valley, he added.