Focus turns to Syria in refugee crisis

US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed the European response to the Syrian refugee crisis in a phone call on Tuesday, the White House said. Among other issues, they discussed how to alleviate the root causes of the refugee flow, focusing in particular on facilitating "a political transition that can unite Syrians."

"The two leaders agreed on the need for a Europe-wide solution, in which all European member states accept their fair share of refugees," said the White House.

But the Obama call could likely be diluted by accusations that Washington has itself not done enough to address the growing refugee crisis, despite being the leading humanitarian donor to the region.

In the fiscal year ending September 2015, the United States, the world's biggest economy, took in 70,000 refugees from around the world, but the country has been slow in processing applications from Syria. The US promised to take in only 10,000 refugees next year - less than 1 percent of the projected numbers. Those figures are dwarfed by the up to 1 million Syrian refugees that Germany is expecting to take in this year alone.

US considers options in Syria

As the migrant situation continued to challenge European leaders, who on Tuesday managed to reach an agreement on a quota system to distribute an initial 120,000 refugees between the bloc's member states, former CIA chief David Petraeus also urged the United States to play a more active role in addressing the cause of the refugee influx from Syria.

Testifying before the US Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington DC, Petraeus campaigned for establishing a no-fly zone over Syria to avoid a "geopolitical Chernobyl" as well as civilian "safe zones" to minimize the flow of migrants.

But his appeal might fall on deaf ears, with millions of Syrians already forced into camps across the Middle East, tens of thousands crossing Europe on foot and hundreds still washing up dead on beaches.

Leaders focus on Syrian crisis

British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that the political process in Syria had to be addressed to find solutions to the migrant influx.

The two leaders met at the prime minister's summer residence and discussed "how a big part of the answer to the refugee crisis must be a solution to the situation in Syria," a spokesman for Cameron said. But the UK has been slow in reacting to the refugee crisis, accepting only limited numbers of migrants.

Eastern European nations have taken an even stronger stance in their critical approach to the crisis: Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia had unsuccessfully opposed the EU deal to relocate 120,000 refugees inside the European Union. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was among those who had insisted he would not accept the "diktat" from Brussels.

EU leaders will gather on Wednesday evening in Brussels to try to adopt a unified approach to the crisis that has seen almost half a million people stream into Europe from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in recent months, according to estimates by the UN refugee agency.

In total, more than 4 million Syrians have fled abroad, mainly to neighboring countries, to escape the brutal conflict that has left more than 240,000 people dead.

ss/cmk (AFP, Reuters)