Madrid: Britain promised Friday to take in thousands more Syrian refugees and give 100 million pounds in extra aid, as their plight raised pressure on European leaders.
"Given the scale of the crisis and the suffering of the people, today I can announce that we will do more, providing resettlement for thousands more Syrian refugees," Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters
By AFP
September 04, 2015
Madrid: Britain promised Friday to take in thousands more Syrian refugees and give 100 million pounds in extra aid, as their plight raised pressure on European leaders.
"Given the scale of the crisis and the suffering of the people, today I can announce that we will do more, providing resettlement for thousands more Syrian refugees," Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters on a visit to Lisbon.
Speaking later in Madrid, he said Britain will provide an extra 100 million pounds (137 million euros, $153 million) in humanitarian aid for the Syrian crisis, bringing its total contribution to more than one billion pounds.
But he declined to offer sanctuary for some of the hundreds of thousands of migrants, including many displaced Syrians, who have already reached Europe, some of them in perilous sea crossings. Instead, he said Britain would select Syrians from UN refugee camps near the Syrian border.
"I want to send the message out that the best way to get a new life is not to make this perilous journey," he said at a news conference in Madrid alongside his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy.
Britain, which lies outside the passport-free border Schengen zone shared by most of its European Union neighbours, faces pressure to accept a greater share of Syrian refugees.
Calls for action peaked this week after the publication of harrowing images of a three-year-old Syrian toddler who drowned as his family tried to reach Europe.
"We want to work with NGOs to take them directly from refugee camps, rather than do anything that will encourage these desperately unsafe journeys that are leading to these appalling tragedies," Cameron said, referring to those images.
He did not specify how many more refugees Britain would accept, saying only that more details would be announced next week and that the resettlement scheme would be kept "under review".
Cameron said the level of aid for Syrians was Britain´s biggest-ever response to a humanitarian crisis and greater than that of any other European country. (AFP)
