{"id":21455,"date":"2018-11-07T07:22:44","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T07:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=21455"},"modified":"2018-11-07T07:22:44","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T07:22:44","slug":"lebanon-minister-apologizes-to-egypt-for-insulting-its-cleanliness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=21455","title":{"rendered":"Lebanon minister apologizes to Egypt for insulting its cleanliness"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1400311\/middle-east\" readability=\"51\">\n<p>\nBEIRUT: Lebanon\u2019s tourism minister has apologized to Egypt after criticizing the country\u2019s cleanliness and living conditions in a newspaper interview, Lebanon\u2019s state news agency NNA said.<br \/>Caretaker Tourism Minister Avedis Guidanian, in the interview published on Monday by Lebanon\u2019s English-language Daily Star, complained that negative media reports about Lebanon were harming his country\u2019s image and hindering tourism.<br \/>\u201cLook at Egypt \u2014 is there a place dirtier than it? People are louder than us, there is more traffic than here \u2014 people live in graves, OK? But there is tourism, because they know how to sell the country,\u201d Guidanian said.<br \/>Late on Monday Guidanian apologized for his remarks and visited the Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon on Tuesday, NNA said.<br \/>In Egypt, pro-government TV talk show host Ahmed Moussa said he \u201cdoes not care for his apology,\u201d but stressed the good relations between the people of Egypt and Lebanon. Moussa dismissed the minister as a \u201cfool\u201d and said the Lebanese government should \u201cintervene.\u201d<br \/>An official diplomatic source said the minister\u2019s statement in the newspaper \u201cdoes not reflect the position of Lebanon as a country or government, nor the Lebanese people.\u201d<br \/>\u201cThe Lebanese people come to Egypt for tourism in large numbers,\u201d the source added.<br \/>A Lebanese tourist in Egypt was sentenced in July to eight years in prison after authorities said she had insulted the country in a Facebook video post. The tourist, Mona el-Mazboh, had made a series of complaints including of sexual harassment. Her sentence was reduced in September to one year and suspended, and she left Egypt.<br \/>Lebanon has been without a government for six months since parliamentary elections, holding up vital reforms and raising fears for the economy. Prime Minister-designate Saad Al-Hariri has so far been unable to find consensus among rival political parties to form a national unity government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BEIRUT: Lebanon\u2019s tourism minister has apologized to Egypt after criticizing the country\u2019s cleanliness and living conditions in a newspaper interview, Lebanon\u2019s state news agency NNA said.Caretaker Tourism Minister Avedis Guidanian, in the interview published on Monday by Lebanon\u2019s English-language Daily Star, complained that negative media reports about Lebanon were harming his country\u2019s image and hindering&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":21456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}