The UK FCO has made factual amendments to its travel advice for Egypt to draw attention to yesterday evening’s terrorist outrage in Dahab, Egypt. However, it has not changed the level of its advice, nor is it advising against travel to Egypt.

The Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said:

“The criteria for our decisions on Travel Advice are set out in the Command Paper I presented to Parliament on 1 April 2004 and my Written Statement of 22 June 2004.

“In the foreword to the Travel Advice Review I made clear that our Travel Advice needs to inform people of the threat from terrorism. But I continued “at the same time we must make sure we do not do the terrorists’ work for them by causing too much of the very disruption which the terrorists want”.

“We have to strike a balance between danger and disruption: making public safety the prime concern while minimising the disruption which terrorists want to cause. In the case of terrorist threats, we said we would advise against travel only in situations of extreme and imminent danger - if the terrorist threat was sufficiently specific, large-scale or endemic to affect British nationals severely. We have followed these criteria here. The overall level of our advice remains similar to that after the Sharm al Sheikh bombings in July 2005. We will of course keep this under close and active review.”

“One of the terrorists’ key aims is to undermine the societies, prosperity and economies of those countries they attack. We will not unwittingly assist them in their aim. And this policy has widespread support across Parliament.”

“The government and people of Egypt stood firmly with us when the terrorists attacked in London last year. We now stand equally in solidarity with Egypt.”
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