Refugees will freeze to death, warn EU leaders
Continent ‘could be torn apart’ in biggest humanitarian crisis since Second WorldWar
MIGRANTS crossing the Balkans will begin freezing to death as winter approaches, it was claimed last night amid warnings that the continent is “falling apart” over the biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.
Leaders of Eastern European countries turned on each other at a foultempered emergency summit in Brussels and said the Schengen visa-free zone and even the wider EU could be pulled apart as states closed borders to halt the influx of refugees.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said a solution was urgently needed or thousands of refugees facing winter temperatures on the hillsides and freezing river banks of Eastern Europe would die.
“Every day counts,” he said. “Otherwise we will soon see families in cold rivers in the Balkans perish miserably.”
Miro Cerar, the Slovenian prime minister, said the EU was days from collapse as his country buckled under an unbearable influx of migrants.
“If we do not deliver some immediate and concrete actions on the ground in the next few days and weeks, I believe the EU and Europe as a whole will start falling apart,” he said.
Werner Faymann, the Austrian chancellor, said last night’s meeting would “either consolidate the unity of Europe or watch the slow decomposition of the EU”.
In the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, more than 670,000 people have crossed into Europe from countries including Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan this year. Some 56,000 landed on Greek islands in just six days last week, a record influx as those fleeing Syria race to avoid spending another winter in refugee camps along the country’s border. But there are mounting fears that, poorly dressed and underfed, they will fall victim to rougher seas and the Balkan winter that can reach -15C as they try to reach Germany and Sweden.
Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister of Greece, the first port of arrival for most migrants, said: “We are in front of a huge humanitarian crisis.”
John Dalhuisen, of Amnesty International, said: “As winter looms, the sight of thousands of refugees sleeping rough as they make their way through Europe represents a damning indictment of the EU’s failure to offer a co-ordinated response to the crisis.”
The charity Médecins Sans Frontières warned of frostbite and said there was an urgent need for hot food, warm shelters and washing facilities at major transit points. The UN has announced plans to distribute thousands of raincoats, tarpaulins and socks to migrants exposed in south-eastern Europe.
EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn said there were 20 million refugees in Europe’s backyard, and the Syrian regime’s Russian and Iranian-backed assault on Aleppo, the country’s biggest city, would produce an “immediate impact” on numbers reaching Europe.
The US and Saudi Arabia last night responded to Russian airstrikes in support of the regime by agreeing to boost their military and diplomatic support for Syrian rebels, threatening a worsening downward spiral.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said last week the renewed fighting was creating a “dynamic of displacement”. Initial statistics suggested some of the almost eight million displaced people who had stayed in Syria were also starting to leave.
In the latest evidence of states’ sluggish response to Mr Juncker’s demands
for action, the European Commission revealed last night that just eight out of 28 member states had volunteered emergency equipment and experts to address the crisis, a month after being asked to come forward with offers.
Leaders gathered in Mr Juncker’s office to discuss plans to dispatch 400 border guards and set up checkpoints, in exchange for frontier states dropping their policy of giving arrivals rapid passage to neighbouring countries.
A draft statement circulated last night called for the repatriation of failed asylum seekers to Afghanistan and Pakistan to be speeded up.
However, as they arrived, the leaders lashed out at each other. Mr Cerar attacked Croatia for dumping migrants on its border without warning. He said some 12,000 people a day were arriving in the tiny state of two million.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian leader, demanded an end to Europe’s “open-border policy”, which he blamed for the crisis. And Mr Tsipras criticised the lack of “responsibility” from other states, and said Turkey, the launching point for many trips to Europe, should have been invited to the meeting.
Meanwhile, the bodies continued to wash up. A woman and two children drowned when an inflatable dinghy carrying 63 migrants hit rocks off the Greek island of Lesbos, the Greek authorities said. Another seven people were missing.
The bodies of 43 drowned migrants were recovered off the coasts of Libya yesterday as rough seas plagued smugglers’ boats in the Mediterranean.
THE United States and Saudi Arabia have dramatically responded to Russian air strikes in support of the Assad regime by agreeing to boost their own military and diplomatic support for the Syrian rebels.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, met King Salman of Saudi Arabia in Riyadh for talks over the weekend. Despite Russian leaders saying they had extracted promises of fresh elections from President Bashar al-Assad, Mr Kerry and the Saudi ruler presented a common front in agreeing to hit the regime harder. “They pledged to continue and intensify support to the moderate Syrian opposition while the political track is being pursued,” the State Department later said in a statement.
The statement was the first public acknowledgement of a surge in the number of anti-tank missiles that have been passed to specially-vetted rebel groups from the Free Syrian Army since Russian jets began operations at the end of September. The rebels’ use of American-made TOW missiles has increased ninefold, slowing regime offensives across the country.
Under previous interventions by the Obama administration, commitments to increase supplies to the rebels have followed several weeks after the supplies have started to arrive. The statement also represents a new determination to take on not only the regime but President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
American and Saudi joint support for rebels, including Islamists, in Afghanistan three decades ago forced Russian troops out and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, insisted after the meeting that Mr Assad should have no role in Syria’s future, adding there had been some progress in international talks on resolving the conflict.
Yet there are few signs the armed opposition and most of its backers are ready to come to the negotiating table. Most of the country has fallen from regime hands during four years of war. More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed, and more than four million have fled abroad.
Militants fighting near Damascus said yesterday that they had killed 173 regime soldiers in three weeks. They also claimed to have destroyed tanks, bulldozers and drones.
The fighting has been most intense around Aleppo. In its southern countryside, regime troops have made important gains against rebels not aligned with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), backed by Russian jets, Iranian ground troops and Shia militia from the Lebanese Hizbollah movement and several other groups recruited abroad. Mr Putin has justified Moscow’s intervention as a strike against Isil, but analysts say that jihadist groups are now benefiting from its presence.
Isil has flourished on Aleppo’s northern and southern fringes, seizing a key regime supply route into the city. Meanwhile, Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, has assumed control of local non-Isil strategic operations, raising the spectre of a confrontation between the two groups.