Norway has closed its embassy in Cairo to visitors because of an unspecified threat, the third embassy closure since Norway was placed on an al Qaeda short-list of terror targets last year.
"The closure is based on a threat assessment we have received," foreign ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik told journalists today. He declined to give details of the threat.
The building was closed to visitors, but embassy staff were still working inside, he said. The embassy was likely to stay shut at least until Sunday, after the Friday-Saturday weekend.
In May 2003 a lieutenant of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged Muslims to attack the interests of Norway along with those of the United States, Britain and Australia.
Norway's government, which did not back the U.S.-led war in Iraq, says it does not know why it was placed on the list.
But theories range from Oslo's participation in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan to a bid by Norwegian police to jail Mullah Krekar, an Iraqi Kurdish founder of the Islamic group Ansar al-Islam who lives in Oslo.
Washington suspects Ansar of links to al Qaeda. Krekar, originally allowed into Norway in 1991 as a refugee, denies any connection to al Qaeda or terrorism.
Norway briefly closed its embassy in Addis Ababa last June after another unspecified threat. It also briefly closed its embassy in Nairobi in May because of a threat to the Italian embassy in the same building.