Kurz, an Austrian, says he opposes taking more Afghans

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Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz speaks during the Western Balkans conference at the Chancellery in Vienna, Austria, on 18 June 2021. REUTERS / Lisi Niesner

VIENNA, Aug 22 (Reuters) – Austrian Conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is opposed to hosting more people fleeing Afghanistan now that the Taliban have taken power, he said in statements released on Sunday.

Austria welcomed more than 1% of its population into asylum seekers during the European migration crisis in 2015 and 2016, and Kurz has built his career by adopting a hard line on immigration , winning all parliamentary elections since 2017. read more

Although the European Union is facing what to do with the Afghans who have helped it for the past twenty years, Kurz said it was not an option to come to Austria. Read more

“I am clearly opposed to wanting to voluntarily accommodate more people and this will not happen during my chancellery,” Kurz said in an interview with Puls 24 television channel. Some excerpts from the interview were published before it was broadcast later. Sunday.

Austria has more than 40,000 Afghan refugees, the second largest number in Europe after Germany, which has 148,000, according to data from the UN refugee agency UNHCR for 2020. The population of Austria is nine times smaller than in Germany.

Austria is also a neutral country and not a member of NATO. He sent only a very small number of troops to Afghanistan. The NATO website reports that it was sending 16 troops to the mission of resolute support, an effort to train and advise the Afghan security forces.

“I’m not of the opinion that we should welcome more people. On the contrary,” Kurz said of Afghans fleeing his country.

“Austria has made a disproportionately large contribution,” he added, referring to the large number of Afghan refugees and asylum seekers already in the country.

He said people fleeing Afghanistan should remain in the region, adding that neighboring Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan had only hosted 14 and 13 Afghan refugees, respectively, which match UNHCR data.

Report by Francois Murphy Edited by Chris Reese

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