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Without Turkey, Europe can not solve migration crisis: French official

Xinhua, March 8, 2016 Adjust font size:

Turkey's plan to stem migrant flows is "absolutely necessary" to address migration crisis and without Ankara's help, Europe is doomed to fail in handling relentless migrants flows, a French official said on Tuesday.

At EU-Turkey summit in Brussels, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Monday offered to take back all migrants who enter Europe from Turkey as well as those intercepted in its territorial waters.

In exchange, he asked to double the 3 billion euros (3.3-billion U.S. dollars) already awarded by EU to help refugees stay in Turkey, in addition to faster EU membership negotiations and removal of visa requirements for Turkish nationals.

"It is an absolutely necessary accord which needs to be discussed. Turkey wants to do things, but it demands other things in return. Does this make sense? Of course it does," Stephane Le Foll, government's spokesman said.

"I know one thing is that we need Turkey (to solve the crisis)," he told Itele news channel.

"It's absolutely necessary to address migrants issue with respect to human beings fleeing war and death and also there is a need to control these flows," Le Foll added.

"Otherwise it will be a disaster," he warned.

More than 30,500 migrants have been stranded in Greece after Balkan countries closed their borders, forcing European leaders to dig for quick response to relocate asylum seekers from the debt-ridden country.

Welcoming Turkey proposals, they postponed a deal to next EU summit on March 17-18 to discuss Ankara fresh requests to help stopping migrants. (1 euro = 1.103 U.S. dollar) Endit