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Executive Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU): "This message is wrong"
Photo: Thomas Trutschel / photothek.de / imago images / photothek
Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) has made it clear that the federal government has not reached an agreement with Belarus to accept 2,000 refugees.
"This report is wrong," said the acting minister on Thursday in Warsaw after a meeting with Poland's interior minister Mariusz Kaminski.
Hybrid threat situations are always used to spread false information to the public.
2000 people should not come to Germany
“And one of this false information today was that the German federal government would be ready to take a certain number of these refugees to Germany.
It was the talk of 2000. «He immediately contacted the Executive Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) and received the information that this was not the case.
Belarus had offered the European Union a compromise in view of the plight of the refugees on the border with Poland and the Baltic states.
Minsk is ready to send 5,000 of them back to their home countries, should the EU take in 2,000, the Belta news agency quoted a spokeswoman for President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday.
He discussed the proposal with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"The European Union is creating a humanitarian corridor for the 2,000 refugees who are in the camp," said Lukashenko's spokeswoman Natalia Eismont.
"We undertake to make it easier for the remaining 5,000 - as far as possible and desired - to return to their home country."
Seehofer meanwhile praised Poland's efforts to repel organized migration movements from Belarus.
"What Poland is doing in this migration crisis is right and legitimized." It is about irregular migration, which is organized in a perfidious manner from Belarus and is with a certain probability supported by Russia.
"What Poland is doing here in the protection of the external borders serves everyone in the European Union and, above all, Germany."
"The Poles have been acting deeply European on the border with Belarus for weeks"
Unlike the refugees, Seehofer assured the Poles of German support.
"Germany is firmly on the side of Poland," said Seehofer on Thursday, according to his spokesman Steve Alter in the online service Twitter.
Thousands of refugees from the Middle East, including many Kurds from northern Iraq, are stuck there in freezing temperatures.
The EU accuses the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately smuggling the refugees to the border and using them as a means of pressure against the EU.
Poland has gathered more than 15,000 security guards at the heavily secured border.
"Without effective external border protection, Europe questions itself," explained Seehofer.
"The Poles have been acting deeply European on the border with Belarus for weeks."
muk / dpa