Dacic: Sending migrants back to Serbia is unacceptable

Dacic: Sending migrants back to Serbia is unacceptable

Ivica Dacic says Serbia finds it "unacceptable" that Hungary would send migrants back while more and more are arriving from Macedonia and Greece.

AP quoted the foreign minister as saying: "Serbia is not a collective center - we want to be part of the solution, not collateral damage. There will have to be talks in the coming days with Brussels and other countries."

Dacic, who was in Prague for an OSCE conference on Tuesday when he made the comments, stressed that Serbia, which is not an EU member, has found itself "stuck between two parts of the EU that are not cooperating, and have different policies."

His Czech counterpart Lubomir Zaoralek said that "Europe must return to a normal condition within its internal borders," the agency said, and added that the influx of migrants seeking asylum in Europe was not abating.

Meanwhile, European Commission officials "have been unable to say" today whether Hungary can send those refugees it deems have no right to enter its territory - arriving in the country from the Middle East via Greece and Serbia - back to Serbia, or to Greece, which is the EU country they first set foot in.

EC spokesperson Natasha Berto replied to this question by saying that the EU "has a readmission agreement with Serbia," and that she "does not know whether Hungary has a separate bilateral agreement on returning asylum seekers" - so she "could not make a comment."

Asked whether Hungary can go ahead and send migrants back to Serbia, despite Belgrade saying it will not accept them and telling Budapest to return them to Greece, the EU country they came from - Berto said:

"The EU as a whole is implementing...