Egypt’s Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou told state news agency MENA on Thursday that he was “surprised” at Britain’s decision to suspend all its flights to the red sea resort city Sharm El-Sheikh.
Zaazou urged an “immediate reconsideration” of this decision that British officials took for “unjustified” reasons.
The Egyptian tourism minister also illustrated that consultation between the British and the Egyptian sides almost always takes place on critical issues, though the British government took this decision unilaterally.
The UK has not issued any travel bans on Egypt since 2011 although many other countries have advised their citizens not to travel to Egypt, Zaazou told MENA by phone from London.
The Egyptian tourism minister said that he would be conducting a number of meetings with British officials to convince them to overturn the flight suspensions.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has several times urged all parties not to jump to conclusions and that the investigations will reveal the truth behind the crash. He has also stressed that the results of the incident will be issued with transparency.
"We don't have anything to hide," El-Sisi said during his visit in the UK.
Up to 20,000 British tourists are awaiting flights home following the UK’s precautionary decision to suspend all flights by UK-based airlines over Egypt’s Sinai after fears that an explosive device was the likely cause of last weekend's crash of a Russian airliner over the peninsula.
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