Almost 40 years after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s revolution removed Libya from the tourist map, the President’s son plans to turn the untouched coastline of the country into the Côte d’Azur of North Africa.

Seated before Ancient Greek columns at Cyrene, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi presented plans for a multibillion-pound project to turn 180 miles (290km) of pristine coast into an eco-friendly magnet for high-end tourists. The master plan for the Green Mountain project, covering 2,000sq miles (5,000sq km) of Mediterranean region between Benghazi and Tobruk, has been sketched by the British firm of Lord Foster of Thames Bank.

Some experts found the scheme, which places three chic resorts around North Africa’s greatest Greek and Roman remains, to be vaguely defined and raised questions about its feasibility. The first project, for a grand hotel by the Temple of Zeus, will replace a hostelry left in ruins when the Royal Air Force bombed it in 1942, believing that General Rommel was there.

While entrepreneurs dream of a new Côte d’Azur, Mr Gaddafi hopes that providing a neglected region with a high-tech economy will symbolise the return of Libya to respectability. “It is time that we join the developed countries and make a statement that, environmentally and culturally, we are civilised,” he said.

An engineer who is finishing a doctorate at the London School of Economics, Mr Gaddafi, 35, serves as his father’s emissary and troubleshooter. He has shown a more outward-looking stance than the 65-year-old “Guide of the Revolution”. He has called for a constitution and a limited free press, and he sounded a dissident note over the Bulgarian and Palestinian medical workers released in July after eight years in prison.

Mr Gaddafi seemed nervous before 200 dignitaries and media flown in from around Europe to witness his “Cirene Declaration”. This creates “the world’s first large-scale conservation and sustainable development project”. The Libyans have promised an initial $3 billion (£1.5 billion), with millions more coming from investors.

Mr Gaddafi preferred not to talk about the impact of bringing thousands of tourists into a country still governed according to his father’s “green” creed. This mix of Islam and socialism is still enforced by a high-security state apparatus. “Of course, we are going to have more democracy but there is no link between this project and democracy,” Mr Gaddafi told The Times. Sir Vincent Fean, the British Ambassador to Tripoli, said that he was impressed by how Libya aimed to develop its natural treasure intelligently. British involvement includes arts and architecture trusts of the Prince of Wales.

The optimists see a future with affluent travellers and discerning tourists. “The St Tropez crowd will want to go where no one has ever been. They’ll come in their yachts,” a British adviser to a property firm said. The opening of big hotels would help to solve a problem: Libya would bend its ban on alcohol for their visitors, he predicted.

There are sceptics. Mark Bostock, a director of Arup, the British-based engineering firm, said that it would take a lot to prove that turning the wilderness into a world-class tourist draw would succeed. “This is a brown site with huge development potential . . . But for the moment I don’t see anything other than a very nice brochure. If it is going to be opened up to millions of people, they are going to have to get the balance right.”

Times Recommends

• No cause for celebration in crushed Sarajevo
• Jazz funeral for the final victims of Katrina
• French fined for 'insulting' civil servants