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EU Announces Syria Donors Conference for June

Lisa Bryant

   PARIS - The European Union said Friday that it would host an
   international donors conference in June for refugees from Syria and
   surrounding countries, even as the bloc criticized Turkey for using
   asylum-seekers as political pawns.

   Announcement of the June 29-30 donors conference came during an EU
   foreign ministers meeting in Zagreb that addressed two related refugee
   crises. The first involved the roughly 1 million Syrians hoping to
   cross Turkey's now-closed borders to safety, following an uptick in
   fighting in Idlib. It remains unclear whether their situation might
   ease under a new cease-fire in the region, agreed upon by Ankara and
   Moscow.

   Europe's second migrant concern relates to the thousands now clamoring
   to cross Turkey's borders with Greece and Bulgaria, which now are also
   closed. Their massive arrival over the past few days came after Turkish
   President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country needed more EU support
   to handle its Syrian refugee burden.

   Under a 2016 deal, the Europeans earmarked nearly $6.8 billion in
   assistance for Turkey to care for the refugees within its borders and
   block them from moving on to Europe. But Ankara says the EU has been
   slow to pay up, and the money goes to aid agencies rather than directly
   to the government.

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