Refugee crisis could spark WAR if Austria closes border with Germany, Merkel warns
GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned of fresh conflicts in Eastern Europe if countries fail to properly manage the refugee crisis.
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GETTY•AP
Ms
Merkel said Balkan states could be plunged back into war - the first
time since the 1990s - if Germany closed it border with Austria.
She told members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union party that erecting a fence to stem the unrelenting flow of migrants would "lead to a backlash".
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Referencing
the bloody conflicts in the former state of Yugoslavia, she said: "I do
not want military conflicts to become necessary there again."
The
German leader, giving a speech in Darmstadt, southern Germany, said
barbed wire fences along the borders of Hungary and Serbia "will build
up fault lines" and threatens to provoke new tensions.
GETTY
Migrants return to the shore of Cesme in Turkey after winds halted their journey to Greece
GETTY
Migrants wait to cross the Slovenian-Austrian border from the Slovenian city of Sentilj
Slovenia has become the latest country to consider erecting a barrier along its frontier.
Prime
minister Miro Cerar said his country would not close down its borders
but would use "technical obstacles" to control the influx.
He said this could include a border fence "if necessary".
He
added that if Germany and Austria limit the number of migrants arriving
at their borders, Slovenia would have to act because it would face "an
uncontrollable number of migrants".
Migrants turned to Slovenia last month after Hungary closed its border with Croatia.
AP
Migrants wait for buses after crossing the border between Slovenian and Austria
Ms Merkel has stressed the need for European solidarity on the migrant crisis.
"I want people in Germany to be able to say in a few years 'they did it well, and we were able to manage it," she said.
Finland is also facing increasing tensions between ethnic Finns and asylum-seekers.
Interior minister Petteri Orpo said migration posed the biggest security threat to the Nordic country.
He said
there was a "growing risk" of violent attacks against asylum-seekers
and among asylum-seekers, saying some have been refused refuge because
of their participation in terror-linked organisations.
Security
police chief Antti Pelttari says the threat of a terror attack is still
"low" in the country of 5.5million but that the agency has a watch-list
of 300 people with suspected Islamist extremists.
Immigration
officials estimate that some 35,000 migrants will have arrived in the
country by the end of the year - a tenfold increase on 2014.
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