Motor Sport: The Dakar Rally has been cancelled for the first time in its 30-year history after the event was threatened by terrorist groups.
There are also concerns over security in Mauritania, especially, after four French tourists were killed in the country last month.
Organisers of the 6,000km rally, Amaury Sport Organisation, have been advised by the French government to cancel the race which was due to begin on Saturday from Lisbon.
In a statement, they said direct threats were made against the event by "terrorist organisations".
There had been repeated calls for the race, originally known as Paris-Dakar, to be cancelled over security fears and the danger the fast-riding cars, motorbikes and trucks across the deserts of north Africa pose to local populations.
"The organisers of the Dakar have taken the decision to cancel the 2008 edition of the rally scheduled from the 5th to the 20th of January between Lisbon and Senegal's capital," Amaury Sport said, adding it planned carry out the race in 2009.
"Based on the current international political tension and the murder of four French tourists ... but also mainly the direct threats launched directly against the race by terrorist organisations, no other decision but the cancellation of the sporting event could be taken."
Yesterday France warned Amaury Sports against holding stages in Mauritania because it said "the terrorist risk" cannot be ruled out.
Three attackers, who authorities suspect were linked to al-Qaeda, gunned down four French tourists and injured a fifth as they enjoyed a Christmas Eve picnic by the roadside in the south of the country, near the border with Senegal.
Gunmen killed three soldiers three days later in the remote and sparsely populated north of the country, bordering Algeria and Morocco's breakaway territory of Western Sahara.
Sources close to French intelligence services said there had been a specific threat from al-Qaeda against the rally.
In a statement published on several Islamist websites on December 29th, al- Qaeda's north African wing denounced the race as "neo-colonialist" and accused the Mauritanian government of collaborating with "crusaders, apostates, infidels".
France's Sports Minister, Bernard Laporte, said the rally's cancellation would have "disastrous economic consequences" for country's where the rally passed through but added that security issues would have to come first.
"After a point you can't just talk about economics and you have to talk first about security," he told reporters during a visit to Guadeloupe.
A spokesman for Mauritania's President, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, said in a statement he regretted the decision and that "despite the isolated cases of killings, Mauritania remained a safe, welcoming, hospitable and open country."