DITCH US AND WE’LL LET THOUSANDS OF JIHADIS INTO EUROPE

10 MARCH 2015, (DAILY MAIL, LONDON) Greek ministers have threatened t o send ‘millions of immigrants and thousands of jihadis’ to Western Europe if it is forced out of the euro.

The country’s defence and foreign ministers made the warning as eurozone creditors urge them to speed up promised reforms to receive payments on a £172billion bailout.

Without the funding, the country – which shares a border with Turkey - will go bust, forcing it out of the EU’s single currency.

Turkey has become the preferred transit route for European jihadists travelling to fight in the Middle East for extremist organisations such as Islamic State.

If Europe leaves us in the crisis, we will flood it with migrants, and it will be even worse for Berlin if in that wave of millions of economic migrants there will be some jihadists of the Islamic State too

Nikos Kotzias, the Greek foreign minister, told EU colleagues in a meeting last week that there would be far-reaching consequences in the event of a breakdown of order in his country. He said: ‘There will be tens of millions of immigrants and thousands of jihadists, if you take out Greece.

‘The Western Balkans is not stabilized. Then you have the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, NorthAfrica.’In a similar warning, Panos Kammenos, the Greek defence minister, said that if the eurozone allowed Greece to go bust it would give EU travel papers to illegal immigrants crossing its borders or the thousands held in detention centres.

He said: ‘If they deal a blow to Greece, then they should know the migrants will get papers to go to Berlin. ‘If Europe leaves us in the crisis, we will flood it with migrants, and it will be even worse for Berlin if in that wave of millions of economic migrants there will be some jihadists of the Islamic State too.’

Mr Kammenos, who is the leader of the Right-wing Independent Greeks party which is in coalition with Greece’s ruling Syriza government, said: ‘If they strike us, we will strike them. We will give to migrants from everywhere the documents they need to travel in the Schengen area, so that the human wave could go straight to Berlin.’ Most Greeks want the country to keep the euro, but two-thirds also continue to back the government’s tough stance to renegotiate the bailout package. Last month, Greece and its Eurozone creditors struck a deal to extend the Greek bailout to June.

Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister and leader of the Syriza movement, had to bow to Germanled pressure to stick to the broad terms of its £176bn bailout in order to obtain the four month extension.

The country’s creditors in the 19-country eurozone endorsed Greece’s request for the extension after the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.