World

BEIJING — An international tribunal ruling against Beijing’s extensive claims in the South China Sea is the Asian giant’s biggest diplomatic setback in years, leaving it facing a difficult choice between pragmatism and nationalism, analysts say.

Beijing has unleashed a deluge of vitriol against the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, but at the same time the permanent UN Security Council member is trying to position itself as a key player in the global community.

Beijing’s claims to almost the whole of the strategically vital South China Sea are embodied in a nine-dash line dating from 1940s maps, and it has built up a series of artificial islands capable of supporting military operations.

But when the Philippines, a rival claimant, asked the UN-backed tribunal to rule on 15 issues relating to the dispute, it ruled there was no legal foundation for China’s ambitions to control the area’s bounty.

The announcement unleashed a flood of condemnation from the Chinese government and state media, which for months had been preparing for an unfavourable outcome with attacks on the tribunal’s integrity, calling the group everything from a “fraud” to a “mutant”. 

Angry Chinese citizens vented their spleen online but authorities reportedly censored the most aggressive comments, and imposed tight security around the Philippine embassy amid fears of protests.

Beijing reiterated its right to declare an air defence identification zone in the area Wednesday, but did not explicitly threaten action in the water.

Its wrath was undercut by the fact that by boycotting the proceedings, insisting that the tribunal had no jurisdiction, Beijing had repeatedly rejected the opportunity to defend its position, analysts said.

Yanmei Xie, a China analyst for the International Crisis Group, said its ambitions for a bigger place on the global diplomatic stage put it in a quandary. 

“China is at a point where it wants to participate more in the shaping of international institutions and in some cases has taken up a role as a leader,” she told AFP.

Last year China set up a new multilateral lender, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, in September it will host the annual G-20 summit, and it contributes more blue helmets to UN peacekeeping missions than any other country in the world.

But its hard won credibility could be at stake if it is seen as setting itself “against international law and international institutions” or “cherry picking” rules for its own convenience, she said.

True test

China’s ruling Communist Party has long used nationalism to bolster its legitimacy, but the rhetoric has escalated under President Xi Jinping, who has responded to weakened economic growth with calls to resist the kind of pernicious Western influences that led to the country’s exploitation and weakness in the 19th century. 

At the same time it has also asserted its territorial claims more aggressively, with Xi regularly exhorting the military to improve its ability to win battles.

“This really will be the first true test of Xi Jinping’s leadership because he’s ridden the tiger of nationalist sentiment and wrapped himself in the flag I think very successfully,” said Euan Graham, of Australia’s Lowy Institute think tank.

But at the same time, “China does take its membership of the United Nations and the Security Council very seriously,” he said, adding “it’s not easy to reject an approved tribunal that is drawing on a United Nations treaty”.

Jay Batongbacal, a maritime affairs expert at the University of the Philippines, said the judgement was “a foreign policy disaster for the Party”.

“It’s going to take a lot of great statesmanship to move China from its very hardline public position without looking like it’s conceding,” he told AFP.

Although China’s foreign ministry issued a hardline response to the ruling, full of denunciations, it also offered an olive branch. The country is “ready to make every effort with the states directly concerned to enter into provisional arrangements of a practical nature”, it said at the end of a lengthy statement reasserting its claims of sovereignty.

Beijing has warned that it will meet force with force if necessary, but Hu Xingdou, a foreign policy expert at Beijing University of Technology, said a military reaction to the ruling was unlikely.

“It would lead to the interruption of China’s modernisation and lead China to become more and more closed,” he said.

Ultimately, he said, China’s response “must not be too exaggerated, and must not be too outraged”.

PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire — Democrat Bernie Sanders endorsed former rival Hillary Clinton for president in a show of party unity on Tuesday, saying she was the best candidate to fix the country's problems and beat Republican Donald Trump in the November 8 election.

With Clinton nodding in agreement beside him, Sanders put their bitter primary campaign behind them and said Clinton would take up the fight to ease economic inequality, make college more affordable and expand healthcare coverage for all Americans.

"This campaign is about the needs of the American people and addressing the very serious crises that we face, and there is no doubt in my mind that, as we head into November, Hillary Clinton is far and away the best candidate to do that," he told a raucous crowd in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, that included plenty of vocal Sanders supporters.

"I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States," the US senator from Vermont said.

His endorsement, coming five weeks after Clinton became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, brought the most prominent holdout in the party's liberal wing into Clinton's camp. Sanders threw his support to Clinton less than two weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where she is expected to be formally nominated.

"I can't help but reflect on how much more enjoyable this election will be now that we are on the same side," Clinton said of Sanders. "Thank you Bernie for your endorsement, but more than that, thank you for your lifetime of fighting injustice."

In a statement, the Trump campaign said Sanders was now officially part of the rigged system he had criticised during the long primary battle with Clinton.

“Bernie’s endorsement becomes Exhibit A in our rigged system — the Democrat Party is disenfranchising its voters to benefit the select and privileged few,” said Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to Trump.

Clinton hopes the joint appearance will help her win over Sanders supporters, some of whom carried Sanders signs into the rally and frequently drowned out her backers. In recent Reuters/Ipsos polling, only about 40 per cent of Sanders backers said they would back Clinton, and the crowd at Tuesday’s rally made it clear she still had work to do.

“I am absolutely certain I will not vote for Hillary Clinton,” said Gale Bailey, a Sanders supporter and an unemployed graphic designer from Rochester, New Hampshire, who attended the rally in a Sanders T-shirt.

“She’s a crook, and I’m not going to vote for a crook,” Bailey said, adding that she would write in Sanders’ name on the November ballot.

The appearance in Portsmouth concluded weeks of negotiations between the two camps as Sanders pressed for concessions from Clinton on his liberal policy agenda.

It came after Clinton last week adopted elements of Sanders’ plans for free in-state college tuition and expanded affordable healthcare coverage. Sanders also successfully pushed to include an array of liberal policy positions in the Democratic platform, which a committee approved on Saturday.

Sanders did not win all of his policy fights, most notably failing to win support for blocking a vote in Congress on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

But he told the rally in Portsmouth that “our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratically controlled senate, a Democratically controlled house and a Hillary Clinton presidency — and I am going to do everything I can to make that happen”.

Top Democrats, including President Barack Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favourite of the party’s liberal wing, have already announced their support for Clinton, leaving Sanders at risk of being left behind in the Democratic battle against Trump.

“I think all signs point to the fact that we’re going to have a very united party going into Philadelphia,” Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said on CNN earlier on Tuesday, “and when you compare it to the Republicans, we’re going to be miles ahead of them”.

Trump has struggled to unify the Republican Party after alienating many establishment figures with his stances on immigration, Muslims and women. A number of prominent Republicans are skipping the party’s convention in Cleveland next week.

In another sign of the Democrats’ growing unity, two prominent liberal groups that had backed Sanders, the Communications Workers of America labour union and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, announced their support for Clinton on Monday.

AMSTERDAM/BEIJING — China said it will ignore a ruling expected on Tuesday by an arbitration court in The Hague in a case in which the Philippines is challenging Beijing's right to exploit resources across the South China Sea.

China has boycotted the hearings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, saying it does not have jurisdiction over the dispute.

Foreign ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, asked how China would be getting the ruling, said it would have nothing to do with the court.

"We won't accept any of their so-called materials, no matter what they are," Lu told reporters.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency said the "law-abusing tribunal" had issued an "ill-founded award". In a dispatch from Manila, it said the award was made "amid a global chorus that as the panel has no jurisdiction, its decision is naturally null and void".

The ruling stands to ramp up tensions in the region, where China's increased military assertiveness has worried its smaller neighbours and is a point of confrontation with the United States.

China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbours Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

The United States and China often conduct military exercises in the area and regularly accuse each other of militarising the region.

"No matter what kind of ruling is to be made, Chinese armed forces will firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security and maritime interests and rights, firmly uphold regional peace and stability, and deal with all kinds of threats and challenges," China's defence ministry said in a bilingual Chinese and English statement.

US diplomatic, military and intelligence officers said China's reaction to the court's decision will largely determine how other claimants, as well as the United States, responded.

If, for example, China accelerates or escalates its military activities in the disputed area, the US and other nations will have little choice but to respond with new and possibly enlarged and multinational maritime freedom of navigation and aerial missions, the US officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Contingency planning for such exercises is already completed or in its final stages, said one of the officials, who quickly added: "We hope it doesn't come to that." Even if Beijing ignores the decision, it is significant as it will be the first time that a legal challenge has been brought in the dispute, which covers some of the world's most promising oil and gas fields and vital fishing grounds. 

Around 100 members of a Philippine nationalist group demonstrated outside the Chinese consulate in Manila on Tuesday, calling on Beijing to accept the decision and leave the Scarborough Shoal, a popular fishing zone off limits to Filipinos since 2012.

Will judges go big

The case, brought by the Philippines in 2013, hinges on the legal status of reefs, rocks and artificial islands in the Scarborough Shoal and Spratly Island group.

Manila's 15-point case critically asks the tribunal to rule on the status of China's so-called "nine-dash line", a boundary that is the basis for its 69-year-old claim to roughly 85 per cent of the South China Sea.

The tribunal will not decide on matters of territorial sovereignty, but will apply the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in determining which countries can claim economic exploitation rights, based on geographic features.

Under the 1982 UNCLOS, islands grant their owners a 12 nautical mile radius of sovereign territorial waters.

Manila argued in closed court hearings that none of the islands, shoals and reefs in the Spratlys are large enough to grant an additional 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for fishing and extracting seabed resources.

Manila also contests China's effective control of the Scarborough Shoal, a scattering of rocks off the coast of the Philippines' Luzon Island, seeking a ruling that would show it sits within the Philippines' EEZ.

A decision on the nine-dash line's legality would signal that the court's judges had "decided to go big", said Julian Ku, law professor at Hofstra University. "If the nine-dash line were declared invalid, then in theory all the other countries would be emboldened." 

The court has no power of enforcement, but a victory for the Philippines could spur Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei to file similar cases.

Japan, which is involved in a separate territorial dispute with China in the East China Sea, said its military would closely monitor Chinese activity after the ruling.

"We urge all parties concerned to react in a way that does not raise tensions," Defence Minister Gen. Nakatani told a briefing in Tokyo. "We will keep a close watch on the situation in the East China Sea."

LONDON — Britain will not rush to trigger divorce proceedings with the European Union, a leading ally of incoming Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday as David Cameron bowed out at his final Cabinet meeting.

May, 59, will on Wednesday replace Cameron, who is resigning after Britons rejected his advice and voted on June 23 to quit the EU, plunging the country into political and economic uncertainty.

Arriving for the brief Cabinet meeting, she waved to reporters from the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, shortly to become her home. She will face the enormous task of disentangling Britain from a forest of EU laws, accumulated over more than four decades, and negotiating new terms of trade while limiting potential damage to the economy.

Her ally Chris Grayling, the Leader of the House of Commons, said there was no hurry to invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which will formally launch the process of separation and start the clock ticking on a two-year countdown to Britain’s actual departure.

“I think Article 50 should be triggered when we’re ready. The most important thing right now is we do what’s in our national interest,” Grayling told Sky News.

“We get ourselves ready for the negotiation, we decide what kind of relationship we want to negotiate, and then we move ahead and trigger Article 50. We’ll do it right, we’ll do it in a proper way, we’ll do it when we’re ready.” His comments may dampen hopes among Britain’s EU partners that May’s surprisingly rapid ascent might accelerate the process of moving ahead with the split and resolving the uncertainty hanging over the entire 28-nation bloc.

Her last rival, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out of the leadership race on Monday, removing the need for a nine-week contest to decide who would be leader of the ruling Conservative Party and prime minister.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that Britain should clarify quickly how it wants to shape its future relationship with the EU, adding she wanted London to remain an important partner.

“But of course the EU and the remaining 27 member states also have to protect their interests,” Merkel said. “For example, whoever would like to have free access to the European internal market will also have to accept all basic freedoms in return, including the free movement of people.” 

Last woman standing

May, who had favoured a vote to stay in the EU, was left as the last woman standing after three leading rivals from the referendum’s winning Leave campaign self-destructed in the course of a short-lived leadership race.

She has served for the past six years as interior minister, regarded as one of the toughest jobs in government, and cultivated a reputation as a tough and competent pragmatist.

Apart from the task of leading Brexit, she must try to unite a fractured party and a nation in which many, on the evidence of the referendum, feel angry with the political elite and left behind by the forces of globalisation and economic change.

Among her first acts will be to name a new cabinet which will need to find space for some of those who campaigned successfully on the opposite side of the referendum.

That could mean significant roles for Grayling and former defence secretary Liam Fox, two Leave advocates who threw their support behind her leadership bid.

May has adopted the mantra “Brexit means Brexit”, declaring on Monday there could be no second referendum and no attempt to rejoin the EU by the back door.

“As prime minister, I will make sure that we leave the European Union,” she said.

She also made a pitch for the political centre ground, calling for “a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few”.

She promised to prioritise more house-building, a crackdown on tax evasion by individuals and companies, lower energy costs and a narrowing of the “unhealthy” gap between the pay of corporate bosses and their employees.

“Under my leadership, the Conservative Party will put itself completely, absolutely, unequivocally, at the service of ordinary working people... we will make Britain a country that works for everyone,” she said.

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel expects Britain’s new government to “quickly” define its relationship with the European Union after conservative Theresa May becomes prime minister on Wednesday.

“The United Kingdom will need to quickly clarify how it wants its ties with the European Union to be in future,” Merkel said late Monday at a reception for diplomats north of Berlin. 

She was speaking just hours after it became clear May would lead Britain into talks to quit the European Union when her last rival in the bid to succeed David Cameron pulled out.

Merkel reiterated that it was now up to London to formally trigger Article 50 to leave the EU following last month’s shock referendum backing a “Brexit” or British exit from the Union.

Only then could negotiations on any future relationship between Britain and the EU begin, she added.

Merkel stressed that Britain would remain an important partner for Germany, Europe’s top economy, but underlined that its access to the EU’s single market depended on respect for key principles including the freedom of movement of EU citizens.

May has said immigration controls would have to be included in any deal for Britain to access the EU’s single market.

Merkel once again expressed her regret that Britons had opted to turn their backs on the EU.

“It’s a bitter turn of events,” she admitted.

“Yet I am firmly convinced that the European Union is strong enough to survive this turning point.”

ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan defended his plan to give Syrian refugees Turkish citizenship in comments published Monday, arguing the country has ample space after a backlash against the suggestion.

Erdogan said on July 2 that Syrians could eventually be granted Turkish citizenship “if they want it”, in remarks which were met with anger from opposition politicians and social media users.

More than 2.7 million Syrian refugees now live in Turkey, where they have guest status, according to the Turkish government.

In his first comments on the issue since announcing the plan, Erdogan said Syrians with dual citizenship did not have to return to Syria once the conflict was over.

“Is it a must for dual citizens, for people with citizenship, to return to their countries of birth?” he told Turkish reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Warsaw, quoted by the Hurriyet daily.

“When Turks went to Germany in 1963, no one asked whether they would or would not return to Turkey,” he said, referring to the Turkish so-called Gastarbeiter who helped Germany’s economic recovery after World War II.

He added: “There is no need to worry, this country has 79 million people living on 780,000 square kilometres of land. 

“Germany is half our size and has 85 million people,” he added, lightly overstating the German population.

“We are a country that can easily overcome [challenges].” 

Solution needed

The president even suggested that empty homes built by the state housing agency could be used to house Syrians.

“Most of these Syrians work illegally. 

“What we’re saying is, there needs to be a solution. Among these people, there are doctors, engineers, lawyers, health workers, teachers, all of these people can benefit our country: they can be given citizenship,” Erdogan added.

In January this year, Turkey allowed Syrian refugees to be given work permits but only 5,502 Syrians were granted such paperwork, according to Turkish media quoting labour ministry statistics.

The president’s comments come after Haberturk newspaper reported on Saturday that there were plans to give up to 300,000 Syrian refugees Turkish citizenship, targeting skilled individuals.

Soon after the report appeared, #suriyelilerehayir (“No to Syrians”) was the top trending topic on Twitter in Turkey.

On Saturday, a Syrian man and a Turkish teenager were killed after a fight between a group of Turks and Syrians in central Konya province in the latest violent incident highlighting the growing tension.

Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, warned that Erdogan’s plan would cheapen Turkish citizenship and cause ethnic conflict, saying “Turkish citizenship must be deserved and confirmed in good conscience.”

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, who is government spokesman, said after a Cabinet meeting Monday that work on the citizenship plan was in progress but had not been completed.

“Currently work continues on how those Syrians who will benefit Turkey, have no links to terrorism and can build a bridge between Turkey and Syria can become Turkish citizens.”

SEOUL — North Korea threatened Monday to take "physical action" after Washington and Seoul announced they would deploy a sophisticated US anti-missile defence system to counter the growing menace from Pyongyang.

Seoul and Washington had on Friday revealed their decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in the South following recent North Korean missile and nuclear tests.

The two allies have not yet revealed exactly when and where the system, which fires projectiles to smash into enemy missiles, would be deployed but said they were in the final stage of selecting a potential venue.

"The DPRK will take a physical countre-action to thoroughly control THAAD... from the moment its location and place have been confirmed in South Korea," the artillery bureau of the North's military said in a statement, according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

North Korea's military, which has "sufficient latest offensive strike means", will take "more merciless and powerful successive corresponding measures against the US keen to ignite a war by deploying THAAD", it said.

It also warned the South of "miserable self-destruction" as a consequence of deployment of the THAAD system.

"We once again warn the enemies that it is the steadfast will of the [Korean People's Army] to make merciless retaliatory strikes to reduce South Korea to a sea in flames, debris once an order is issued," the statement said.

Seoul denounced the "ridiculous threats" by the North, which had staged serious provocations including a nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February.

"North Korea must recognise who is threatening peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and first apologise for its provocations," defence ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told reporters.

Communications cut 

Also on Monday, the North cut all communications with the US through its office at the UN — a rare channel of communications between the two nations that do not have official diplomatic ties. 

The move was in protest at new US sanctions targeting leader Kim Jong-un for a long list of serious human rights abuses, the first sanctions that name the leader of the isolated state.

Pyongyang had earlier slammed the sanctions on Kim as a "declaration of war" and vowed to take strong retaliatory measures. 

Tensions are high since Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a series of missile launches that analysts said showed the North was making progress towards being able to strike the US mainland.

Pyongyang also test-fired what appeared to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile a day after the THAAD announcement by Seoul and Washington, sparking swift international condemnation.

Saturday's launch followed Pyongyang's back-to-back tests of powerful new medium-range Musudan missiles on June 22 — theoretically capable of reaching US bases as far away as Guam.

The planned deployment of the powerful anti-missile system has angered the South's neighbours including China, which said Friday the move would "seriously damage" regional security in northeast Asia.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye however defended the move as a "purely defensive" action aimed at protecting the South.

"The international community will be aware that we have no intention to target or threaten another country... we are taking a purely defensive measure to protect our country and our people," Park said in a meeting with advisers.

She also urged support from South Koreans over the deployment of powerful weapon, in the face of growing protest in the areas said to be potential venues.

DALLAS — The US military veteran who fatally shot five Dallas police officers in a racially charged attack last week was plotting a larger assault, authorities said, disclosing how he had taunted negotiators and written on a wall in his own blood before being killed.

Micah Johnson, who had served with the US Army Reserve and had been deployed in Afghanistan, had been “disappointed” in his experience with the military, his mother told TheBlaze.com in an interview broadcast online on Monday.

“The military was not what Micah thought it would be,” Delphine Johnson, whose son killed by a police robot carrying a bomb at the end of his rampage on Thursday night, told The Blaze. “He was very disappointed. Very disappointed.” 

Johnson, a 25-year-old African-American, told police negotiators during an hours-long stand-off that he had been angered by a pair of incidents earlier in the week in which police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and St. Paul, Minnesota, killed black men and he had wanted to “kill white people” .

Those incidents, the latest in a series of high-profile and controversial killings of black men by police in cities including New York, Ferguson, Missouri, Chicago and Baltimore, sparked a renewed wave of protests over the weekend over race and justice.

Scores of people were arrested in Baton Rouge on Sunday after authorities warned that violence during street demonstrations over the fatal police shootings would not be tolerated.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown told CNN on Sunday that Johnson had improvised as he used “shoot-and-move” tactics to gun down officers during a demonstration on Thursday. It was the deadliest day for US law enforcement since the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Brown said a search of Johnson’s home showed the gunman had practised using explosives, and that other evidence suggested he wanted to use them against law enforcement officers.

“We’re convinced that this suspect had other plans,” he said, adding that last week’s police shootings led Johnson to “fast-track” his attack.

Johnson’s military training helped him to shoot and move rapidly, “triangulating” his fire with multiple rounds so that police at first feared there were several shooters.

The US Department of Defence and a lawyer who had represented Johnson in the past did not return requests for information on his military history or the status of his discharge.

Johnson’s mother did not give details about why she felt he had been disappointed by the military. Several media organisations have reported that while Johnson was in Afghanistan from November 2013 to July 2014, a woman soldier in his unit accused him of sexual harassment.

Obama to attend memorial

Even as officials and activists condemned the shootings and mourned the slain officers in Dallas, hundreds of people were arrested on Saturday and Sunday as new protests against the use of deadly force by police flared in US cities.

Protesters faced off with police officers wearing gas masks on Sunday evening in Baton Rouge. Media, citing Baton Rouge police, reported that at least 48 people were taken into custody after demonstrators clashed with police following a peaceful march to the state capitol.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, 21 officers were injured on Saturday when they were pelted with rocks, bottles, construction material and fireworks.

Three countries have warned their citizens to stay on guard when visiting US cities rocked by the protests.

A candlelight vigil was set for 8pm on Monday in Dallas City Hall plaza. President Barack Obama was due to travel to the city on Tuesday to attend a memorial for the slain officers.

HORGOS, Serbia  — Exhausted but hopeful, hundreds of migrants defy summer heat in a makeshift camp on the Serbia-Hungary border, determined to reach the EU member nation despite tough new measures aimed at stopping them.

A few metres from the metal fence topped with barbed wire which marks the border, dozens of tents, many cobbled together from blankets and branches, offer the only shelter to some 600 migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

They wait near the Horgos-Roszke border post in hope of being let into Hungary’s transit zone to seek asylum, but that has become even more difficult since Budapest tightened its rules for asylum-seekers and decided to return all those caught within 8 kilometres of the border.

“As a result of new legislative measures in Hungary, which took effect on 5 July, the number of refugees and migrants on the Serbian side of the border has doubled over the last few days to above 1,300, the majority of them women and children,” the UN team in Serbia said in a statement Friday.

Some 40 kilometres west, another makeshift camp at the Kelebija border crossing is home to several hundred more migrants, while some 300 have taken shelter in a state-run reception centre in the nearby town of Subotica, double its capacity of 150.

Balkan route still exists

The numbers arriving in Serbia are well down from the 4,000 to 5,000 a day seen in 2015 and early 2016, after the so-called “Balkan route” to wealthy northern Europe was effectively shut down to migrants in March.

But Serbian authorities voiced alarm at the number of people still arriving in their country, saying that 102,000 migrants had been registered since the start of the year — more than 500 a day.

“That means that Western Balkans route still exists,” Serbia’s Labour Minister Aleksandar Vulin said on Friday, adding that “Serbia will not allow to be the space where migrants will crowd.” 

The UN has warned that the latest measures taken by Hungary — whose right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban has taken a tough line on Europe’s migrant crisis — “will further aggravate the situation”.

The UN said a total of only 30 asylum-seekers have been allowed to enter Hungary each day, while “hundreds more have had to wait for weeks out in the open in often desperate and inhumane conditions”.

Humanitarian organisations led by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) deliver aid to migrants, but sanitation conditions in the Horgos camp are extremely poor: there are few toilets and no bathrooms in the camp. The only water tap is mobbed by people trying to wash and do laundry.

Some of those in the camp have already tried to sneak across the border — unsuccessfully.

“I tried to enter Hungary illegally, there were 15 of us in a group, a smuggler cut the fence, we walked for about 30 minutes and than police caught us and sent back to Serbia,” a 23-year-old Afghan told AFP, asking not to be named due to fear for his family’s safety back in Kabul.

According to Hungarian Helsinki Committee, more than 17,000 irregular migrants have been apprehended by Hungarian authorities since the beginning of the year.

Some migrants are finding that even after shelling out huge sums to people smugglers, their dreams of reaching the EU to claim asylum are hitting a wall.

In Turkey “I paid 5,000 euros [$5,500] to go to Germany, but only made it to Bulgaria. There I paid 3,000 euros more to go to Austria, but only arrived to Serbia. Now I don’t have money any more,” 22-year-old Iranian Husein Apposi said.

WARSAW — Officially the talk at this week’s NATO summit in Warsaw was all about deterring a resurgent Russia, supporting Ukraine and Afghanistan, and protecting Baltic NATO members. But in the corridors, there was only one dominant anxiety — Brexit.

Britain’s referendum vote to leave the European Union has triggered uncertainty across the Atlantic and around the continent, which spilled over at the NATO event. Big time.

“We are at a NATO meeting but most of the discussions have not been about NATO issues, they have been about the outcome of the referendum and the consequences,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said after a dinner with his 27 NATO counterparts.

Outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron, greeted with more sympathy than reproach over the result which prompted him to resign, took every opportunity to reassure allies that Britain would remain fully committed to European and international security even though it was leaving the EU.

“Britain is going to think through all the ways we can keep our strength and our power in the world. This is not an exercise of national vanity, this is all about Britain’s interests. It is perfectly possible to do that,” he told reporters on Saturday.

Indeed NATO officials said the British, who have Europe’s biggest defence budget, seemed at pains to compensate for Brexit by pledging more commitments to NATO operations.

Cameron also announced an early parliamentary vote on modernising Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent.

US President Barack Obama was keen to ensure Washington’s closest ally in Europe is not sidelined or punished by European partners as a result of a vote that he had warned against.

Obama quizzed the leaders of the EU’s two main institution, Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker, in private talks about what trade terms Britain could expect and how soon a deal could be cut to reassure markets, officials present at the meeting said.

Quick settlement

“Obama was quite keen to push for a quick settlement of Brexit,” a European official said. “Both Tusk and Juncker took him on a pedagogic route and stressed it is important to keep the remaining 27 [EU states] united. If we go superfast, we could lose that unity.” 

For now, it is Britain holding up the launch of withdrawal negotiations, with Cameron leaving the decision on when to trigger the EU exit clause, starting a two-year divorce process, to his successor, who will not be chosen by the ruling Conservative Party until September.

White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said participants in the Obama-EU meeting had recognised “just how important it is that this be done in a way that not upset financial markets that not upset global economic stability”.

“It was clear from the meeting that this is not going to be done in a way that is punitive towards the United Kingdom but rather as a path to finding a new relationship,” he said.

EU, French and German officials have made clear that Britain will not be able to keep full access to Europe’s lucrative single market, notably for its big financial services sector, unless it accepts EU rules, including allowing free movement of EU workers. Both candidates to succeed Cameron have said they will restrict immigration.

The Americans, who are losing their strongest advocate inside EU councils, are not alone in fearing the consequences.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked Cameron in a private meeting who would argue for Turkey’s EU membership bid once Britain was gone, said a Turkish source. The answer — Italy and the Netherlands — did not seem much of a consolation.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, who treasures London’s forthright stance towards Russia and military support for the Baltic states, told reporters: “I hope that withdrawal from the EU will put even more pressure on Britain to be more active on security matters. I am sure that will happen.”