Be alert, but don't cancel trips to Egypt, Straw tells Britons
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Your support makes all the difference.The Foreign Office and the US State Department issued new warnings yesterday to tourists visiting Egypt to take care. The warning posted on the Foreign Office website early yesterday morning, described Egypt as a destination with "a high threat from terrorism".
Tour operators yesterday said that they were not expecting high cancellations following the bombs. Philip Breckner, director of the tour firm Discover Egypt based in London, said he had 300 people flying to Egypt tomorrow and only one had cancelled. He had even been emailed by one tourist due to fly to Sharm el Sheikh next month who said: "We are still very much looking forward to the trip to Egypt and want to support the Red Sea resorts as much as we can with our tourism trade."
A spokesman for the Federation of Tour Operators (FTO) said that, as long as Foreign Office guidelines didn't go as far as advising people not to travel, his members would continue to fly there.
Mr Straw, who condemned the bombings in Egypt as the work of "evil people", said: "We are asking other countries not to say 'don't travel to the United Kingdom', despite the fact that we have suffered these two very serious terrorist attacks in the past three weeks."
The US State Department put Egypt on its danger list after several bomb attacks in April, including one in which an American was killed. Visitors there are urged to keep their eyes open and avoid hanging about in visible groups in crowded public places where they could present an easy target.
Turkey, where one Briton was among 20 injured in a bomb attack on a coastal resort two weeks ago, is in the "high risk" category - but neither is on the Foreign Office's red list of the most dangerous spots in the world, which Britons are urged to avoid at any cost. The places the Foreign Office says Britons should not visit under any circumstances include: North Caucasus region of Russia, around the Chechen republic; Aceh, Indonesia; Afghanistan, outside Kabul; Pakistan and Iran adjoining Afghanistan; and Minanao island in the Philippines.
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