Straw Admits Mi5's Bali Blunder

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday made the embarrassing admission that MI5 had made "serious misjudgments" in assessing and communicating the threat facing Britons before October's terrorist atrocity in Bali.

The Commons intelligence committee revealed that emails had been sent by the Foreign Office to private subscribers, mostly residents, in Indonesia on September 27, two weeks before the October 12 bombing, advising UK citizens to be more circumspect than usual. Nine days before the bombing, a further email specifically warned subscribers to stay away from bars and nightclubs.

Astonishingly, none of this effectively private advice was posted on the Foreign Office travel advice website, or given to travel agents. Nor did the Foreign Office change the status of the threat from significant to high, even though British diplomats had been given such an enhanced warning as long ago as February.

More than 200 people, including more than 30 Britons, were killed in the attack.

Sir David Omand, the government's security and intelligence coordinator, is to review how the security and intelligence agencies assess terrorist threats in the wake of the committee's report, Whitehall sources said yesterday. He is likely to say that MI6, which is responsible for gathering intelligence abroad from human sources, and GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping centre, should have a greater role.

The counter-terrrorism analysis centre is dominated by MI5, which is primarily responsible for protecting Britain's domestic security, and is based at its headquarters. Its lead role in assessing all terrorist threats is a legacy of its role countering Irish-based terrorism, for long the biggest threat facing Britain.

Mr Straw also said the Foreign Office would review the way in which it communicates travel advice.

Officials admitted the advice was poorly organised with the latest information often added to the bottom of a posting on the web, even though it was the most important piece of advice.

The intelligence and security committee, chaired by the former Labour cabinet minister Ann Taylor, concluded that the "Foreign Office travel advice is not well formatted and consequently does not highlight the key points, particularly the risks; they get lost in the complexity of the document".

The intelligence services will take comfort from the MPs' finding that there was no specific information about the timing or position of the attack.

However, in a damning assessment the MPs conclude that developments earlier this year - including a failed grenade attack on a US diplomatic residence - should have led MI5 to reassess the security threat in the country as "high", rather than "significant".

The British government issued a "generic" warning of an attack in Indonesia on the Foreign Office website on August 27, but this did not mention Bali by name.

The MPs say: "A threat existed to western tourists in Indonesia; the largest concentration of western tourists there is on Bali; and they gather in large numbers in a limited number of nightclubs. These facts should have been recognised by the security service (MI5) as pointing to a potential target.

"This was a serious misjudgment and meant that the security service did not assess the threat correctly and, therefore, raise the level of threat to high."

The shadow foreign secretary, Michael Ancram, urged the government to act swiftly on the MPs' findings to restore public confidence. He suggested that the Australian government had learned the lessons of Bali more quickly than the UK.

Inconsistencies between British and Australian travel advice before last month's Mombasa bombing may have dented public confidence "much further", he said.

MI5 and MI6 have traditionally been wary of stepping up warnings where there is a lack of specific intelligence because, they say, this would dilute the effect of any warning genuinely based on such intelligence.

Whitehall officials have criticised US agencies for issuing too many warnings, which could lead to a dangerous "cry ing wolf" response from the public. A recent independent inquiry into Australia's security services' similar response to the same intelligence Britain received made no criticism or recommendations.

Yet the travel advice given by the Australian foreign ministry to its citizens was more specific, much clearer, and more comprehensible than that of the Foreign Office here.

The difference, sources said yesterday, was based on the more secretive British culture and also exaggerated deference given by British embassies abroad to local feelings.