Tensions in Austrian govt as migrant crisis bites
Tensions within Austria's government, stoked by the migrants crisis, burst into the open yesterday as the head of the centre-right threatened to scupper the ruling coalition after less than two years in office.
"If we are unable to show soon -- by which I mean in the coming months -- that we are willing and able to govern, then it makes little sense to keep messing about," Deputy Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner said in a newspaper interview.
"I say quite openly that after the Upper Austria state election (last weekend) I am not prepared to be an idle passenger," he said.
Mitterlehner's People's Party (OeVP) is junior partner to the centre-left Social Democrats (SPOe) of Chancellor Werner Faymann in an unloved "grand coalition" which is due to remain in office until 2018.
Meanwhile, some 200 Syrian and Afghan refugees clashed in a crowded German refugee centre in Hamburg overnight, leaving several people injured in the third such riot this week, police said yesterday.
Fifty police were called in to contain the mass brawl, which broke out in an argument in a shower block, local newspaper the Morgenpost reported.
The two groups attacked each other with iron bars and furniture and by hurling rocks, reported the daily and DPA news agency, citing emergency personnel in the northern river port city. Police said several people were wounded, and several arrested, without providing figures.
Hungary warned Wednesday that Europe's migrant crisis was threatening the continent's stability, at a UN meeting called to agree on a global response to the largest refugee exodus since World War II.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the meeting of some 70 countries with an appeal to keep borders open, combat xenophobia and integrate refugees and migrants.
"The future does not belong to those who seek to build walls or exploit fears," said the UN chief.
Leaders gathered at the United Nations on the same day as Greek authorities recovered the bodies of a migrant woman and a child who drowned when their dinghy capsized in the Aegean, the latest reminder of the tragedy.
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