Page 9 - Aruba Today
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WORLD NEWS 9
Monday 26 October 2015
EU leaders criticize each other at summit on refugees
RAF CASERT German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, speaks with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras prior to a won’t be halted until the
AMER COHADZIC round table meeting during an EU summit at EU headquarters in Brussels on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2015. world resolves the war in
Associated Press EU leaders meet on Sunday to discuss refugee flows along the Western Balkans route. Syria, which is driving mil-
BRUSSELS (AP) — European lions out of the country.
leaders lashed out Sunday (AP Photo/Francois Walschaerts) Vucic said he was pre-
at each other’s handling pared for “hard,
of the continent’s great- Croatia in mid-September. as a whole will start to fall answer. Sunday’s meeting not very pleasant” talks. He
est immigration crisis since Slovenian Prime Minister apart.” was hoping to come up said Serbia would not “put
World War II, Miro Cerar said his tiny Al- Serbian Prime Minister Alek- with some Band-Aid solu- up any walls” like Hunga-
even as they came togeth- pine nation was being sandar Vucic asked a fun- tions at best. Greek Prime ry’s new razor wire-topped
er to seek ways to ease the overwhelmed by the refu- damental question that the Minister Alexis Tsipras com- border fences.
plight of the tens of thou- gees — with 60,000 arriving 28-nation bloc and non-EU mented that having a sum- Croatian Prime Minister
sands marching across the in the last 10 days — and nations like Serbia have mit on the migrant crisis was Zoran Milanovic asked of
Balkans toward the Euro- was not receiving enough been unable to answer of little use if Turkey was not fellow EU nation Greece:
pean Union’s heartland. help from its EU partners. since the migratory trek invited. “Why doesn’t Greece con-
At a hastily called emer- He put the challenge in across the Mediterranean Many say the EU needs to trol its maritime half with
gency summit in Brussels, simple terms: if no fresh and through Turkey started get control of the refugee Turkey?”
11 EU and Balkan leaders approach is forthcoming last spring: “What we are flow at the bloc’s external Greece, criticized for
were especially looking to “in the next few days and going to do with hundreds border between EU-mem- being ill-prepared as a
shore up Greece’s porous weeks, of thousands of these peo- ber Greece and Turkey. Mi- first EU buffer against the
border with Turkey and I do believe that the Euro- ple?” gration experts, however, migrants, decried the lack
slow the flow of people pean Union and Europe Half a year later, there is no say the flood of refugees of EUsolidarity.
heading north toward the “Till today, it was difficult to
European Union’s heart- find a solution, because a
land. series of countries adopt
“Extraordinary times de- a stance ‘Not in my back-
mand extraordinary mea- yard,’” Tsipras said.
sures,” German Chancellor Hungarian Prime Minister
Angela Merkel said. Viktor Orban, so often the
Nearly 250,000 migrants target for building border
have passed through the fences that diverted the
Balkans since mid-Septem- flow of refugees to other
ber and the surge is not be- nations, simply said “Hun-
ing deterred by either cold gary is not on the route
weather or colder waters anymore, so we are just
off Greece. observers here.”
Croatia said 11,500 people Then he lashed into mea-
crossed into the country sures other EU nations had
Saturday, the highest in a already taken, especially
single day since Hungary those belonging to the
put up a fence and refu- Schengen passport-free
gees started coming into border zone.q
