EU, Turkey to hold special migrant summit in March

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Friday 19 Feb 2016 - 21:05 Makkah mean time-10-5-1437 (Image from Telegraph UK) Brussels, (IINA) - European Council President Donald Tusk announced on Friday that the EU and Turkey will hold a special meeting early March to push forward an aid-for-cooperation deal to curb migrant flows to Europe, AFP reported. "We agreed that our joint action plan with Turkey remains a priority, and we must do all we can to succeed", Tusk told a press conference after the first day of a European Union summit in Brussels. "This is why we have the intention to organize a special meeting with Turkey in the beginning of March", Tusk said without mentioning an exact date. The meeting of the leaders of 11 EU countries with Turkey had been planned before the summit on Thursday but was cancelled after Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pulled out following a bomb attack in Ankara. Pressure to enforce the action plan adopted in November is growing as EU officials say thousands of migrants are still crossing the Aegean daily from Turkey after more than one million made the perilous journey last year in the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Speaking at the same press conference, European Commission Chief Jean-Claude Juncker said: "This morning we confirmed there was no alternative to smart, intelligent cooperation with Turkey". Central EU countries said on Wednesday that they would push for further border restrictions in Europe's passport-free Schengen zone unless they see results from Turkey. A central European diplomat told journalists the number of asylum seekers arriving from Turkey needed to drop from as many as 2,000 a day to hundreds of people per day. Juncker also said EU leaders unanimously opposed "unilateral actions" to resolve the migrant crisis after Austria's Interior Minister Johanna Milk-Leitner said on Wednesday the country would cap the daily number of asylum claims at 80. European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos warned in a letter to Milk-Leitner that such plans would "be plainly incompatible" with EU law, and Austria should reconsider them. AG/IINA