FRANKFURT, Oct 6: Arab publishers hailed their invitation as special guests at the world's largest literary event, the Frankfurt Book Fair, as a long-overdue honor on the opening day of the show Wednesday.

The vice-president of the Arab Publishers' Association, Fathi Khalil Al-Bess, said that Muslim authors had often confronted closed doors in the West and that it had taken fears of terrorism to awaken broad interest.

"We want to draw attention to the fact that Arabs are a civilized nation with a glorious history and a difficult present but we have our eyes on the future," Al-Bess, who is also general manager of Amman-based publishing house Dar Al-Shorouk, told AFP.

"We have been trying for decades to approach the West and start dialogues. We wish they had put effort into understanding our problems before." Some 300,000 visitors are expected to descend on the German financial capital for the 56th annual fair, which runs through Sunday. Nearly 6,700 exhibitors from 111 countries are presenting around 350,000 titles.

The more than 200 Arab writers invited to Frankfurt represent a broad range of traditions and influences. Syria's Adonis, a poet in Parisian exile who is considered one of the founders of modern Arab verse, and Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian writer living and working in Ramallah amid the bloodshed of the Middle East, are among the most eagerly awaited guests. -AFP