Mitsotakis makes border wall an election pledge

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis promised Friday to extend a wall across all of the country's land border with Turkey as he campaigned for the general election.

Mitsotakis, who called the May 21 election earlier this week, is expected later in the day to sign his center-right New Democracy government's decision to nearly double the length of the existing steel border wall over the next year.

The wall currently spans 37.5 kilometers, and the government plans to extend it by 35 kilometers over the next 12 months. More than 100 kilometers of wall will be added to that by 2026, government officials said.

Border security remains a high-profile issue in Greece due to long-standing disputes with Turkey and a mass migration of refugees and migrants into the European Union during 2015-16 that largely was triggered by war in Syria and Iraq.

Mitsotakis and other...