Fuelling the fire - Terror fears on plane crash

THE suggestion by British prime minister David Cameron it is “more likely than not” that a Russian airliner was downed by a terrorist bomb killing 224 people in the Sinai peninsula on Saturday will add to instability in the region. Coming months after the June beach attack in Tunisia in which 38 people were murdered — 30 of them British — it highlights a worrying trend.

It is unfortunate, and a contributory factor to that regional instability, that just after he made that announcement that Mr Cameron met Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the former general who toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi two years ago. Al-Sisi has led a savage crackdown on dissent and hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters have been shot dead by al-Sisi’s security forces.

Last year British firms sold €2.26bn worth of arms to Saudi Arabia and over €70m worth of arms to Egypt — anther hypocritical example of a democracy supporting violently anti-democratic regimes. As you sow, so shall you reap indeed.