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 Hours before a meeting of EU interior ministers to discuss the
proposal, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said his country
would reject any quota system for redistributing 120,000 refugees
across the 28-nation bloc.
Nearly half a million people fleeing war and poverty, two-fifths of
them from Syria, have crossed the Mediterranean this year to reach
Europe, overwhelming the EU's southern states and plunging them into
furious rows over border controls.
The U.N. refugee agency, the UNHCR, said the 120,000 people the bloc
is seeking to share out were equivalent to just six days' worth of
arrivals at the current rate.
"A relocation program alone, at this stage in the crisis, will not
be enough to stabilize the situation," UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa
Fleming said, calling on the EU to set up reception facilities for
tens of thousands of refugees at any one time.
Amid bitter recriminations between member states, EU leaders want to
focus at an emergency summit on Wednesday on ramping up aid for
Syrian refugees in Turkey and the rest of the Middle East and
tightening control on the bloc's frontiers.
Officials are hoping that some compromise on the relocation scheme
can be found when interior ministers meet at 2:30 p.m. (8:30 a.m.
EDT) on Tuesday, to prevent the summit being consumed by the same
thorny issue.
But despite seeking consensus for weeks on the quota plan, diplomats
said it was still unclear whether a deal could be reached.
Senior officials have voiced growing exasperation with the feuding
-- notably between Germany, the main destination for the refugees,
which wants governments to accept mandatory national quotas for
housing the newcomers, and ex-Communist eastern states vehemently
opposed to such demands.
The EU's executive Commission backs the quota scheme, but opponents
call it a distraction, irrelevant to the problem of targeting aid to
the neediest and reducing the numbers risking dangerous sea
crossings.
After a failed interior ministers meeting last week, it is clear
that the dissenters, notably Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech
Republic, can be out-voted. But diplomats said they were working to
find consensus to avoid such an outcome, arguing that on such a
sensitive issue it could further poison relations in the bloc.
"This is the worst I've ever known things in more than 20 years
dealing with European affairs," one senior diplomat said.
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SUMMIT PLANS
EU officials hope the emergency summit will deliver concrete pledges
of financial and other support for Turkey, Jordan and other nations
housing some four million Syrian refugees, as well as for the 11
million Syrians now homeless in their own country.
"We feel that after the past few weeks people are much more ready to
support refugees while they are still outside Europe, so we want to
jump on that," one senior EU official said.
The Commission said last week it was ready to come up with about 1
billion euros for Turkey, more than five times what the EU has
already deployed for the two million refugees there.
A senior official told Reuters that about two-thirds of that sum
would come from existing funds penciled in for Turkey and the rest
by diverting other money in the EU's common budget. But a key
element would be raising a matching sum from EU states.
Funds would be used to help the most affected communities, boost
health services and support teaching in Arabic. In return, Turkey
must do more to improve the conditions for refugees, to fight
smugglers and stop more people reaching Greece.
"Turkey has to deliver," the official said. "Europe wants to take
its share of refugees and will do, but Syrians should stay as close
as possible to their homes."
Turkey wants money but also more recognition of its status after
many years in which it has been held in a limbo of possible
accession to the EU. Europe is considering holding a "mini-summit"
with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Oct. 5.
(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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