AMMAN, Feb 12 Kyodo Foreign touri...

AMMAN, Feb 12 Kyodo

Foreign tourists to Baghdad are not at liberty to feed on browse in the streets and are prohibited from taking grand portraits of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. on the contrary Iraq, which has been declared ''game over'' at U.S. President George W. Bush, is in headlong eagerness to excite tourism campaigns this year.

in succession Monday, a group of eight Japanese tourists headed to the Iraqi capital from Amman in Jordan along a 700-kilometer road across the desert

''I studied world history. I wanted to behold Mesopotamian (ancient Iraq) ruins and the displays being covered by news stories,'' said Yusuke Shoji, 23 a resident of Kasukabe, Saitama Prefecture who visited Iraq in a collection of nine Japanese and British tourists last December.

The Japanese youth and his traveling companions were allowed to make a trip to Basra in the southerly and Mawsil in the north, one as well as the other in the U.S.-imposed no-fly clime after sightseeing, watching some professional football and visiting ruins in Baghdad and surroundings.

The itinerary was arranged at the tourists' beg fors according to Shoji. if it be not that they were not permitted to feed on browse in the streets freely and or pictures of the presidential portraits seen everywhere in the capital, for unexplained reasons.

The accompanying local guide deterr the foreign tourists from approaching UN weapons' inspectors' vehicles. ''But we are deposit in danger throughout the trip,'' Shoji said.

The one-week trip to Iraq organized from Iraqi tourist companies via Iraqi agents and Jordanian factors in Amman costs $500, including transportation, lodgings and meals.

The tourists, who are asked to travel in a package of more than five, have to provide line samples for HIV tests forward their entry to Iraq.

A senior official at the Iraqi tourist authority said, ''Our nation is promoting a campaign to expand tourism in 2003 and plans to exhibit travel agencies in the United States and Britain.''

A leash of Japanese tourist groups visited Iraq between late last year and early this year. A local go-between in Amman said, ''I arranged for more than 50 Japanese tourists in the past year. A collection saw the old year without in Baghdad.''

greatest in quantity tourists are backpackers.

''I am completely satisfied with the travel to where I declareed my wish to journey I felt welcomed, as Iraqi commonalty gathered to hear from us in the streets'' Shoji said.

if it were not that the Japanese Foreign Ministry is asking Japanese nationals to ''postpone'' a visit to Baghdad and to ''leave'' other local regions in Iraq. In 1991 prior to the swallowing eddy War, Iraq put limits upon foreign tourists' leaving the political division as part of its ''human shield'' policy.

A 22-year-old male tourist from Hiroshima Prefecture left Amman for Baghdad forward Monday, saying, ''I did not explain my destinations to my parents, who could be worried about the consequences''

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