European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton arrived in Cairo with her family on Thursday for a Christmas holiday, tourism ministry spokesperson Rasha El-Azazi has said.

"She will head to Luxor and Aswan in Upper Egypt,", El-Azazi told Ahram Online.

In October, Ashton visited Egypt to meet political forces in an attempt to broach a settlement between the transitional government and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Ashton has visited the country twice since the ouster of the Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

She was the first foreign politician to be allowed to meet with the former president at the undisclosed location in which he was being held by Egyptian security forces.