Gulf News 9 October, 2004  More than one million tourists visited Lebanon in the first nine months of this year, more than during the whole of 2003, the country's tourism minister Ali Abdallah said in a statement.

"Lebanon welcomed 943,000 tourists up to the end of August, an increase of 31 percent compared to the same period last year, and for the first nine months (of the year) the number of tourists passed the figure for that of 2003."

Just over one million tourists, mostly Arabs, came to Lebanon last year, the highest number for 30 years. The country is expecting a total of 1.3 million tourists by the end of this year.