ZAGREB, 19. OCT. 2015 – The head of the Croatian president’s operational team for the refugee crisis Mate Granic stated Croatia “must close the green border with Serbia and call in the army.” “There are two crisis borders and Croatia has little choice unless it wants to become a hot spot or a collection center – and that is to close the green border with Serbia and Montenegro and to let in as many refugees as it can. It is practically the only measure that can be taken,” Mate Granic told N1 tv. Pointing out that this was a global, regional and national crisis, Granic said it was “very dangerous for Serbia to begin directing migrants toward Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro which have no mechanisms to accept them, which would be a new pressure on Croatian borders.” “And this is about thousands of kilometers of the border,” he remarked. “This must be stopped through negotiations at the highest level, through the ministries of foreign affairs,” said Granic, who also believes that the military should be deployed on the border. “The armed forces have already been deployed by everyone, Opatovac was practically built by the army with the activity of riot police and organizations, the Red Cross and UNHCR. We would have not endured this without the army,” he has been quoted as saying. Meanwhile, thousands of refugees from the Middle East spent the night “in the cold and mud of no man’s land” between Serbia and Croatia, Reuters reported. According to the agency, “their passage west slowed by a Slovenian effort to impose limits on the flow to western Europe.” “Croatian police held them back, with its own refugee camps full to capacity,” said Reuters, while “cold and tired refugees chanted ‘open the gate, open the gate!’.”
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