World

ANKARA/LESBOS, Greece — Turkey is ready to take in another 200 migrants deported from the Greek islands this week, a senior government official said, as it presses ahead with a disputed EU deal aimed at shutting down the main route for illegal migration into Europe.

A first group of 202 migrants, mostly Pakistani and Afghan, were shipped back to Turkey on Monday under an agreement which will see Ankara take back all migrants and refugees who cross the Aegean to enter Greece illegally.

In return, the European Union will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with money, visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations.

"This arrangement will prevent the Aegean Sea being turned into a cemetery for migrants," Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in parliament of a deal meant to dissuade migrants from attempting perilous illegal sea crossings.

Turkey was initially expecting a second group of 200 migrants to be sent back on Wednesday, but the government official said Greek authorities had informed their Turkish counterparts that the move would be delayed until Friday.

The pact has been criticised by refugee agencies and human rights campaigners, who have cast it as inhumane, questioned its legality, and argued Turkey is not a safe country for refugees.

Several dozen migrants being detained at a holding camp on the Greek island of Lesbos protested behind the barbed wire fence of the compound on Tuesday, shouting "We want freedom!"
They were among thousands of refugees and migrants who have arrived on Lesbos on or since March 20 from Turkey, and who are being held until their asylum requests are processed and they are accepted or sent back under the deal.

The first group of returnees from Greece were brought from Lesbos and Chios to the Turkish Aegean coastal town of Dikili on Monday. They were then taken in buses escorted by gendarmes to a "reception and removal" centre in a fenced compound in the town of Kirklareli near the Bulgarian border, from where most are expected to be sent back to their home countries.

On parts of Turkey's Aegean coast where refugees had long gathered before attempting to cross the Aegean, the deterrent effect of the EU deal, struck last month, is apparent.

Turkish security forces have increased checkpoints on roads in a bid to detain would-be migrants. Syrian and other refugees who once packed the cafes and hostels of Basmane, a district of the region's biggest city Izmir, have all but disappeared.

"There's no work. The hotel has been empty for the last 20 days," said Mehmet, whose Basmane hotel had done a thriving trade sheltering migrants in the months ahead of the deal.

But some stores in the neighbourhood still stock unlicensed life jackets and despite the risks, migrants are still trying to cross. Altogether, more people arrived on the Greek islands in the 24 hours to Monday morning than were transported to Turkey, Greek authorities said.

Those returned from Greece on Monday included 130 Pakistanis, 42 Afghans, as well as nationals of Iran, Congo, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Somalia, people familiar with an internal European Commission report said.

There were also two Syrians who had requested a return to Turkey, Turkish officials said.

Davutoglu said a first group of 78 Syrians had been sent to Europe in return as part of the deal. Thirty-two went to Germany, 11 to Finland and another 34 were expected to go on Tuesday to the Netherlands, the European Commission report said.

Rights groups and some European politicians have challenged the legality of the deal, questioning whether Turkey has sufficient safeguards in place to defend refugees' rights and whether it can be considered safe for them.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR has stopped transporting arrivals to and from the Moria camp on Lesbos, initially set up to register arrivals but which has since become what UNHCR calls a "detention centre".

Through barbed wire at the camp, one man held up a piece of cardboard, which read: "Kill us if you want."

On the wall of the sprawling gated complex, which was once an army camp, graffiti read: "No one is illegal".

BAKU/YEREVAN — Azerbaijan and its breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh said they had halted hostilities on Tuesday after four days of intense fighting that had prompted fears of all-out war.

Reuters was not able independently to verify whether the fighting — a resurgence of a decades-old conflict over the status of the region — had, in fact, stopped.

But an official in the breakaway region's Armenian-backed administration said the ceasefire was being observed. "Along the entire line of the front there is a relative lull," the official, Davit Babayan, told Reuters.

Several European countries had urged an end to the fighting, worried that an escalation could cause instability in a region that serves as a corridor for pipelines taking oil and gas to world markets.

The fighting has been the bloodiest in years, with Azerbaijan saying 16 of its servicemen had been killed in the previous 48 hours. Officials in the breakaway region said 20 of their soldiers had been killed since the fighting started.

The ex-Soviet states of Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war over the mountainous territory in the early 1990s in which thousands were killed on both sides and hundreds of thousands displaced.

The war ended with a truce in 1994, although there have been sporadic flare-ups since. The ceasefire was shattered over the weekend, with the two sides exchanging heavy fire using artillery, tanks, rocket systems and helicopters.

Azerbaijan's defence ministry issued a statement saying: "On April 5 at 12:00pm (0800 GMT), on the basis of a mutual agreement, military actions on the contact line between the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan are halted."

An official with the Armenian-backed armed forces of Nagorno-Karabakh told Reuters: "We've been ordered to halt fire."

As late as Tuesday morning, before the ceasefire was announced, both sides had been reporting fresh clashes.

Risk of escalation

An all-out war over Nagorno-Karabakh could drag in the big regional powers, Russia and Turkey. Moscow has a defence alliance with Armenia, while Ankara backs its ethnic Turkic kin in Azerbaijan.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday condemned what he said were Armenian attacks, and said Turkey would stand by Azerbaijan. Earlier, Russia's foreign minister had said Ankara's support for Baku was one-sided.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave with a large ethnic Armenian population that lies inside the territory of Azerbaijan. The violence was a re-awakening of a long-festering ethnic conflict between the mainly Muslim Azeris and their Christian Armenian neighbours.

Envoys from Russia, France and the United States — who make up a body called the Minsk Group that mediates in the conflict — were planning to head to the region, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in Paris.

"We can see that military conflict cannot be the solution," Ayrault told reporters after talks with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Even if the ceasefire holds in the short-term, there is still potential for the fighting to flare again.

Anger and frustration are building in Azerbaijan that years of talks have failed to bring Nagorno-Karabakh under its control. The country has used revenues from exports of crude oil to build up its military, leading some Azeris to believe that if there was another war, they could win it.

Azerbaijan said its troops had seized small pockets of territory in the latest fighting, and were fortifying those locations to make sure that it held on to its gains. 

BAKU — Clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over the Nagorny Karabakh region left at least six people dead on Monday as the worst violence in decades over the disputed territory continued for a third day.

A spokesman for the Armenia-backed separatist authorities in Karabakh told AFP that three civilians, including a 92-year-old woman, were "brutally killed" by Azeri troops" in the village of Talysh in the breakaway region.

Azerbaijan said three of its troops were killed overnight when Armenian forces shelled its positions using mortars and grenade launchers.

Russia, West urge ceasefire 

The latest casualties take the death toll to 39 after clashes over the region — seized by Armenian rebels from Azerbaijan in a war that ended with an inconclusive truce in 1994 — erupted on Friday night, prompting Russia and the West to call for an immediate ceasefire.

Azerbaijan has claimed to have captured several strategic positions inside the Armenian-controlled territory — internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan — in what would be the first change in the front line since the ceasefire 22 years ago.

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian said Monday that a "ceasefire would only be possible if the militaries of both sides return to the positions" they held prior to the outbreak of hostilities.

His comment came a day after Azerbaijan announced a unilateral truce that failed to stop the fighting. 

The energy-rich state, whose military spending exceeds Armenia's entire state budget, has repeatedly threatened to take back the breakaway region by force if negotiations fail to yield results. 

In the Armenian capital Yerevan, defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan said that Karabakh forces had "seriously advanced at certain sectors of the front line and took up new positions".

The report was quickly dismissed as "untrue" by Azerbaijan.

Russia and the West have called for a ceasefire, with President Vladimir Putin, a key power broker, pushing for an immediate end to the fighting, and Moscow's diplomats and military pressuring both sides. 

"We are continuing contacts with Baku and Yerevan so that they hear the signals from Moscow, Washington and Paris," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday.

Mediators from Russia, the United States and France — which have long spearheaded attempts to find a solution to the "frozen" conflict — are set to meet in Vienna on Tuesday. 

At least 18 Armenian and 15 Azeri troops have been reported killed in the latest bloodshed, and one of Azerbaijan's attack helicopters shot down. 

Both sides claimed to have inflicted heavy losses in manpower and military hardware on each other.

'Geopolitical implications' 

Ethnic Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized control of the mountainous Nagorny Karabakh region in an early 1990s war that claimed some 30,000 lives. The foes have never signed a peace deal despite the 1994 ceasefire.

Sporadic clashes happen regularly along the front but the latest outbreak represents a serious escalation and analysts warned it risked spiralling quickly. 

"The Karabakh conflict has serious geopolitical implications," Sergi Kapanadze, a professor of international relations at the Tbilisi State University, told AFP.

The flare-up "threatens the stability of the strategic Caucasus region which is a transit route of Caspian oil and gas to European markets that bypasses Russia, reducing Europe's dependence on Russian energy supplies", he said.

Russia and Turkey — the major regional powers which are at loggerheads following Ankara's downing of a Russian war plane over the Syrian border in November — have found themselves on opposing sides of the conflict.

While ex-Soviet master Moscow has sold weaponry to both sides and treads a cautious line between the two, it has far closer economic and military ties to Christian Armenia, and maintains a base in the country.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to back traditional ally Azerbaijan — a secular Muslim Turkic nation — "to the end" in the conflict.

Speaking on Monday, Erdogan vowed that Azerbaijan would "one day" regain control of Nagorny Karabakh.

"We are today standing side-by-side with our brothers in Azerbaijan. But this persecution will not continue forever. Karabakh will one day return to its original owner. It will be Azerbaijan's," Erdogan told a conference in Ankara broadcast live on television. 

DIKILI, Turkey/LESBOS, Greece — The first migrants deported from Greek islands under a disputed EU-Turkey deal were shipped back to Turkey on Monday in a drive to shut down the main route used by more than a million people fleeing war and poverty to reach Europe in the last year.

Under a pact criticised by refugee agencies and human rights campaigners, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees who cross the Aegean to enter Greece illegally, including Syrians.

In return, the European Union will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with money, visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations.

Two Turkish passenger boats carrying 136 mostly Pakistani migrants arrived from the island of Lesbos in the Turkish town of Dikili, accompanied by two Turkish coast guard vessels with a police helicopter overhead.

A third ship carrying 66 people, mainly Afghans, arrived there later from the island of Chios.

The EU-Turkey deal aims to discourage migrants from perilous crossings, often in small boats and dinghies, and to break the business model of human smugglers who have fuelled Europe's biggest influx since World War II.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan excoriated European governments' response to the crisis even as his government cooperated with the EU scheme.

"As Turkey, we embraced 3 million Syrian victims, but it is clear who tried to keep them away," He said in a speech in Ankara. "Did we send our Syrian brothers back? No we didn't. But they kept these people out of their countries by putting up razor-wire fences."

EU authorities said none of those deported on Monday had requested asylum in Greece and all had left voluntarily. They included two Syrians who had asked to return to Turkey.

European Commission spokesman Margaritas Schinas said the first returns were legal, even though Turkey has not yet made changes to its regulations that the EU said were necessary at the time of the deal.

The EU said at the time of the deal that Ankara would need to change asylum laws to give international protection to Syrians who enter from countries other than Syria, and to non-Syrian asylum seekers returned from Greece.

Migrants keep coming

Altogether, more people arrived on the Greek islands in the 24 hours to Monday morning than were transported to Turkey, Greek authorities said, putting total arrivals at 339.

A few hours after the first boat of returnees set sail from Lesbos, Greek coast guard vessels rescued at least two dinghies carrying more than 50 migrants and refugees, including children and a woman in a wheelchair, trying to reach the island.

"We are just going to try our chance. It is for our destiny. We are dead anyway," said Firaz, 31, a Syrian Kurd travelling with his cousin.

Asked if he knew the Greeks were sending people back, he said: "I heard maybe Iranians, Afghans. I didn't hear they were sending back Syrians to Turkey... At least I did what I could. I'm alive. That's it."

Two groups of mainly Pakistani men, totalling around 100 people, were also intercepted by the Turkish coast guard on Monday near Dikili, a coast guard official said.

Under the pact, the EU will resettle thousands of legal Syrian refugees directly from Turkey.

German police said the first 32 Syrian refugees arrived in Hanover on two flights from Istanbul on Monday under the deal. The European Commission said more flights were due in Finland on Monday and the Netherlands on Tuesday.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Sunday that the "high point of the migrant crisis is behind us", but migration experts say the pressure to reach Europe will continue, possibly via other routes.

A few dozen police and immigration officials waited outside a small white tent on the quayside at Dikili as the returned migrants disembarked one by one, before being photographed and fingerprinted behind security screening.

The returnees from Lesbos were mostly from Pakistan and some from Bangladesh and had not applied for asylum, said Ewa Moncure, a spokeswoman for EU border agency Frontex.

Two buses escorted by gendarmes took the returned migrants to a "reception and removal" centre within a secure fenced compound in the town of Kirklareli near the Bulgarian border.

Turkish EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir said any Syrians returned from Greece would be sent to the city of Osmaniye, around 40km from the Syrian border.

For non-Syrians, Turkey would apply to their home countries and send them back, Bozkir told Turkish broadcaster Haberturk.

Rights groups and some European politicians have challenged the legality of the deal, questioning whether Turkey has sufficient safeguards in place to defend refugees' rights and whether it can be considered safe for them.

Amnesty International's deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik, visiting Lesbos, told Reuters: "It's almost based on the assumption Turkey is a safe country for refugees, and we've documented very clearly that it is not right now."

Amnesty last week accused the Turkish army of turning back thousands of Syrians trying to flee their country in the last few months, sometimes using force.

"The most important thing we lose sight of is that these are individuals who are fleeing horrific scenes of war and we're playing some kind of ping pong with them," van Gulik said.

The EU was determined to get the scheme started on schedule despite such doubts because of strong political pressure in northern Europe to deter migrants from attempting the journey.

There were small protests as the returns got under way.

ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday lashed out at the West for giving Turkey "lessons in democracy", rejecting mounting US and EU criticism over an alleged clampdown on press freedoms under his rule.

"Those who attempt to give us lessons in democracy and human rights must first contemplate their own shame," Erdogan told a meeting of the Turkish Red Crescent in Ankara.

US President Barack Obama warned last week that Turkey's approach towards the media was taking it "down a path that would be very troubling".

Erdogan's comments came as local media reported the fresh arrest of five opposition journalists on Monday, without giving details on who they were.

Turkey's government has been accused of increasing authoritarianism and muzzling critical media as well as lawmakers, academics, lawyers and NGOs.

Two journalists from the leading opposition daily Cumhuriyet face life in prison after being charged with revealing state secrets over a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms to rebels in Syria.

Erdogan met with Obama in Washington last week, and defended press freedom in Turkey, saying some publications had branded him a "thief" and a "killer" without being shut down.

"Such insults and threats are not permitted in the West," he claimed.

Erdogan on Monday again slammed the constitutional court for allowing the two journalists to be released during their trial. The reporters had spent three months in detention until the decision was handed down in February.

He said that the constitutional court had "betrayed its very existence" with the ruling.

On Monday, a Turkish court issued arrest warrants for several opposition journalists, five of whom were detained, local media reported.

They are accused of of violating legal confidentiality by reporting on a corruption scandal which engulfed Erdogan's inner circle in 2013/14 and was centred on the illicit trading of gold with Iran.

The reporters are also accused of belonging to a "terrorist group" — the usual official parlance for the grouping run by Erdogan's arch foe Fethullah Gulen who is accused of being behind the graft claims.

'Wild Man of the Bosphorus' 

The fresh crackdown comes after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he was unhappy about the raft of stories criticising Erdogan in German media in recent weeks.

In a telephone call Davutoglu complained such stories "were incompatible with freedom of the press" and said there should be an end to the publication of such "unacceptable" material, he office said.

German weekly Der Spiegel ran a cover story deeply critical of Erdogan in its latest issue, with a caricature of the Turkish president — whom the magazine called "the wild man of the Bosphorus" — shaking his fist.

He looms large over a tiny Merkel, holding an EU briefcase with her head in her hand, while a paper airplane cut out of a newspaper pokes him in the backside.

The headline on the story read: "The fearsome friend: President Erdogan's crusade against freedom and democracy."

It is not the first time Germany has irked Ankara with its coverage of Erdogan.

Last month Turkey summoned Germany's ambassador to protest a two-minute song lampooning Erdogan that was broadcast on German television.

The TV show responded by re-broadcasting the tune "Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdogan" that ridicules the president, and adding Turkish subtitles.

The satirical song charges, among other things, that "a journalist who writes something that Erdogan doesn't like/Will be in jail by tomorrow".

The row comes as the EU is accused of selling out its principles by offering Turkey visa-free travel and a fast-tracked EU membership process, in exchange for help on the migrant crisis. 

BRUSSELS — Brussels Airport partially reopened Sunday, 12 days after it was hit by Daesh attacks, with tearful staff applauding the first departure and an initial trickle of passengers undergoing strict new security checks.

The key travel hub has been closed since two men blew themselves up in the departure hall on March 22 in coordinated blasts that also struck a metro station in the Belgian capital, killing a total of 32 people.

A Brussels Airlines plane bound for the Portuguese city of Faro became the first plane to take off around 1140 GMT.

Emotional employees and government officials marked the moment with a minute's silence followed by hugs and a round of applause, AFP reporters saw. On the tarmac, fire engines and police vehicles formed a guard of honour for the Airbus A320.

"We're back," Brussels Airport chief executive Arnaud Feist said after watching the plane, decked out with Belgian artist Magritte's trademark birds and clouds, take to the skies.

The departure was followed by two later flights to Athens and Turin, in what Feist called a "symbolic" reopening of the airport. The same three planes were to return to Brussels with passengers later Sunday.

The restart of the airport has been hailed as the beginning of a return to normal for a traumatised country, but the shadow of the attacks loomed large.

Two big white tents were serving as temporary check-in facilities to replace the blast-hit departure hall, and passengers were asked to come three hours before departure to allow time for tight new security checks.

The first several dozen travellers to arrive Sunday were met by heavily armed police and soldiers on the access roads to the airport.

There was also a strong security presence inside the tents where passengers walked through metal detectors and had their bags screened before checking in and being allowed to enter the main building.

A father dropping off his son and a group of friends for the Faro flight was positive about the changes. "This is the safest airport in the world right no, isn't it?" he told reporters.

'We can overcome this' 

Loukas Bassoukos, a 20-year-old IT student waiting for his flight to Athens, said it felt "a bit weird" to be among the first to return to the bomb-hit airport.

"So many people died here," he told AFP. "But I think we can overcome this. I think we slowly have to start trusting the security controls."

Psychologists were on hand to assist any passengers overcome with emotion.

Under the new system, only passengers with travel and ID documents are allowed into the makeshift departure hall, and all bags will be checked before entering. Once inside, travellers will still have to go past the usual security barriers.

The airport will initially only be accessible by car, with no access for buses and trains. Vehicles will be screened and subject to spot checks.

The number of flights will be stepped up quickly in coming days. Still, the airport will only be able to work at 20 per cent capacity at best using the temporary facilities, handling 800 to 1,000 passengers an hour.

It will take months to repair the departure hall, according to Feist. The damage from the blasts was severe, with pictures from the scene showing the building's glass-fronted facade in shatters, collapsed ceilings and destroyed check-in desks.

Feist said he expected the airport to start running normally again from late June or early July.

The closure of Zaventem airport has wreaked havoc on the travel industry, triggering a drop in tourist arrivals and forcing thousands of passengers to be rerouted to other airports in and around Belgium.

Brussels Airport, which claims to contribute some three billion euros ($3.4 billion) annually to the Belgian economy, has not released any figures on the economic impact of the shutdown, but top carrier Brussels Airlines has said it was losing five million euros daily.

In a setback for the airport, Delta Air Lines at the weekend said it was suspending services between Brussels and Atlanta until March 2017 due to the "uncertainty surrounding the re-opening of Brussels airport and weakening demand".

With 260 companies on-site employing some 20,000 staff overall, the airport is one of the country's largest employers.

In the still-grieving capital meanwhile, one thousand people took part in a sing-along in a central square that has become a shrine to the attack victims. In celebration of all things Belgian, they sang "Moules frites" by Stromae and "Bruxelles" by Jacques Brel.

Belgian police are still hunting for a mystery third suspect in the Brussels attacks, dubbed "the man in the hat", who was seen in CCTV footage next to the two airport bombers.

TERTER, Azerbaijan — Clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces rumbled on Sunday, despite Baku announcing a ceasefire after the worst outbreak of violence in decades over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region sparked international pressure to stop fighting. 

Azerbaijan said it had decided to "unilaterally cease hostilities" and pledged to "reinforce" several strategic positions it claimed to have captured inside the Armenian-controlled territory.

The Armenia-backed authorities in Karabakh — which claims independence but is heavily backed by Yerevan — said they were willing to discuss a ceasefire but only if it saw them regain their territory.

Both sides accused each other of continuing to fire across the volatile frontline that has divided them since a war that saw Armenian separatists seize the region from Azerbaijan ended with an inconclusive truce in 1994. 

"The Armenians have continued shelling throughout the day, without interruption," Azerbaijani defence ministry spokesman Vagif Dargahly told AFP.

"Fighting with the use of tanks and artillery continues as Azerbaijan is telling lies that it halted hostilities. Azerbaijan continues shelling both Karabakh army positions and Armenian villages," Armenian defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan told AFP.

An AFP photographer in the Azerbaijani town of Terter — around 10 kilometres from the frontline — reported hearing sporadic shooting Sunday afternoon.

Men carried a coffin draped in Azerbaijan's flag through the streets as the funeral of an Azeri soldier killed in the clashes was held. At least three houses were destroyed by shelling, and women and children had been evacuated.

Fierce clashes left at least 18 Armenian and 12 Azerbaijani soldiers dead Saturday after the two sides accused each other of attacking with heavy weaponry across the volatile frontline. 

The Karabakh authorities said one boy was killed in the fighting, while Azerbaijan said two civilians died and ten were wounded. 

Armenia's President Serzh Sarkisian called the clashes the "largest-scale hostilities" since a 1994 truce ended a war in which Armenian-backed fighters seized the territory from Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan said one of its helicopters was shot down as its forces took control of several strategic heights and a village in Armenian-controlled territory.

Karabakh forces on Sunday claimed they took back the strategic Lala-Tepe height in Karabakh which was captured by Azeri troops on Saturday. 

Baku denied the report, saying that the height remained under its control and that rebel troops sustained "serious manpower losses".

Both Russia and the West appealed to all sides to show restraint, with key regional power broker President Vladimir Putin calling Saturday for an "immediate ceasefire".

Moscow has supplied weaponry to both sides in the conflict, but has much closer military and economic ties to Armenia and Yerevan is reliant on Russia's backing. 

US Secretary of State John Kerry urged the arch foes to return to peace talks under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), reiterating "there is no military solution to the conflict".

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan meanwhile vowed to back traditional ally Azerbaijan "to the end" in the conflict.

"We pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes with the least casualties," Erdogan said.

Ethnic Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized control of the mountainous Nagorny Karabakh region in an early 1990s war that claimed some 30,000 lives. The foes have never signed a peace deal despite the 1994 ceasefire.

Energy-rich Azerbaijan, whose military spending has in the past exceeded Armenia's entire state budget, has repeatedly threatened to take back the breakaway region by force if negotiations fail to yield results. 

Moscow-backed Armenia says it could crush any offensive.

The last big flare-up occurred in November 2014 when Azerbaijan shot down an Armenian military helicopter. 

While the reasons for the sudden surge remain unclear, analyst Thomas de Waal of Carnegie Europe wrote that the "potential for a serious outbreak of fighting has never been greater" as both sides have bolstered their arms.

"It is more likely that one of the two parties to the conflict — and more likely the Azerbaijani side, which has a stronger interest in the resumption of hostilities — is trying to alter the situation in its favor with a limited military campaign," de Waal wrote in a blog posting. 

LESBOS, Greece/CESME, Turkey — There was little sign of preparation on either side of the Aegean less than 24 hours before Greece was due to begin returning migrants to Turkey, and Greek and Turkish officials gave conflicting information on the logistics of the plan.

The returns are a key part of an agreement between the European Union and Turkey aimed at ending the uncontrollable influx into Europe of refugees and migrants fleeing war and misery in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Under the deal, those who cross into Greece illegally will be held and sent back once their asylum applications are processed. For every Syrian returned, one Syrian will be resettled to Europe directly from Turkey.

So far, more than 6,000 migrants and refugees have been registered on Greek islands since March 20, the date on which the agreement came into force. Where they will depart from, to where they will be sent, and even how many people will be taken back to Turkey under this deal on Monday, remains unclear.

On Sunday, there were few signs that Lesbos, the island hundreds of thousands of people passed through on their way to northern Europe, was getting ready to send back migrants. A police spokesman said the force was still awaiting instructions.

Across the Aegean in the coastal town of Dikili, which a Turkish official said would receive refugees sent back from Greece, just two room-size tents were set up on the pier of its cramped port on Saturday. Two portable toilets were installed nearby.

Further south, four small blue tents were set upon the town of Cesme for those sent back from the Greek island of Chios.

Turkey's interior minister, Efkan Ala, was quoted by the pro-government newspaper Aksam as saying 500 people were expected in Turkey from Greece on Monday. Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis would be deported to their countries, he said.

The Athens News Agency reported over the weekend that the returns would begin on Monday morning on two Turkish passenger ships chartered by Frontex, the EU border agency. Some 250 people would be returned each day through Wednesday, the report said, without citing sources.

"Planning is in progress," George Kyritsis, a Greek government spokesman for the migration crisis told Reuters. "I will not confirm any report."

Kyritsis said returns would take place on Monday, "barring any massive hurdle which cannot be overcome", but they would not be of people who have applied for asylum. The numbers being floated "had come out of thin air", he said.

‘Challenging and volatile’

More than 51,000 migrants and refugees remain in Greece since border closures along the Balkans last month. Hundreds of migrants who on Friday broke out of the Chios holding facility in protest at the deal are at the island's port. Hundreds of migrants in mainland Greece are also protesting to demand the borders open.

Arrivals to the islands remained steady on Sunday, two weeks since March 20, with 514 migrants, including many Syrians and Iraqis, crossing from Turkey through Sunday morning. Of those, 364 arrived on Lesbos, authorities said.

Many of those rescued by the Greek coast guard off Lesbos were unaware they would be sent back to Turkey.

Greece's parliament passed an asylum amendment bill on Friday needed to implement the agreement. The legislation does not explicitly designate Turkey as a "safe third country" — a formula to make any mass returns legally sound.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and human rights groups have denounced the agreement as lacking legal safeguards. Amnesty International called it "a historic blow to human rights" and said it would send a delegation to Lesbos and Chios on Monday to monitor the situation.

UNHCR's spokesman on Lesbos, Boris Cheshirkov said there were still gaps in both Greece and Turkey that need to be addressed.

"We're not opposed to returns as long as people are not in need of international protection, they have not applied for asylum," he said.

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama urged world leaders on Friday to do more to safeguard vulnerable nuclear facilities to prevent "madmen" from groups like Daesh from getting their hands on a nuclear weapon or a radioactive "dirty bomb".

Speaking at a nuclear security summit in Washington, Obama said the world faced a persistent and evolving threat of nuclear terrorism despite progress in reducing such risks. "We cannot be complacent," he said.

Obama said no group had succeeded in obtaining bomb materials but that Al Qaeda had long sought them, and he cited actions by Daesh militants behind recent attacks in Paris and Brussels that raised similar concerns.

"There is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material, they would certainly use it to kill as many innocent people as possible," he said. "It would change our world."

Obama hosted more than 50 world leaders for his fourth and final summit focused on efforts to lock down vulnerable atomic materials to prevent nuclear terrorism, which he called "one of the greatest threats to global security" in the 21st century. North Korea's nuclear defiance was also high on the agenda.

Obama has less than 10 months left in office to follow through on one of his signature foreign policy initiatives. While gains have been made, arms-control advocates say the diplomatic process — which Obama conceived and championed — has lost momentum and could slow further once he leaves the White House in January.

A boycott by Russian President Vladimir Putin, unwilling to join in a US-dominated gathering at a time of increased tensions between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine and Syria, may have contributed to summit results marked by mostly technical measures instead of policy breakthroughs.

At the closing news conference, Obama, a Democrat, made clear that the raucous Republican presidential race, particularly controversial comments by party front-runner Donald Trump, weighed on leaders' discussions on the summit sidelines.

Obama sternly dismissed as proof of foreign-policy ignorance Trump's recent suggestion that Japan and South Korea should be allowed to build their own nuclear arsenals, putting him at odds with decades of US policy.

"The person who made the statements doesn't know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean peninsula, or the world generally," Obama said, adding that Americans don't want anyone with such views to occupy the White House.

‘Dirty bomb’ threat

Deadly bomb attacks in Brussels last month have fueled concern that Daesh could eventually target nuclear plants, steal material and develop radioactive dirty bombs. Militants were found to have videotaped the daily routine of a senior manager of a Belgian nuclear plant, Obama said.

Obama said the required 102 countries have now ratified an amendment to a nuclear security treaty that would tighten protections against nuclear theft and smuggling.

"Our nations have made it harder for terrorists to get their hands on nuclear materials. We have measurably reduced the risks," he said.

But he acknowledged that with roughly 2,000 tons of nuclear material stored around the world, "not all of this is properly secured".

Obama, wrapping up the summit, said the leaders had agreed to keep strengthening their nuclear facilities against cyber attacks, something that outside experts said remains a major weak point.

The United States and Japan also announced they had completed the long-promised task of removing all highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium fuels from a Japanese research reactor. Japan is an avowedly anti-nuclear-weapons state as the only country to have ever suffered a nuclear attack.

Despite significant strides by Obama in persuading dozens of countries to rid themselves of bomb-making materials or reduce and safeguard stockpiles, much of the world's plutonium and enriched uranium remain vulnerable to theft.

Earlier on Friday, Obama convened a separate meeting of the world powers to take stock of the landmark nuclear pact they negotiated with Iran last July. It is a critical component of his nuclear disarmament agenda and a major piece of his foreign policy legacy.

Obama inaugurated the first Nuclear Security Summit nearly six years ago, after a landmark speech in Prague in 2009 laying out the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. There is no guarantee that Obama's successor in the White House will keep the issue a high priority.

For now, US experts are less concerned about militants obtaining nuclear weapons than about thefts of ingredients for a low-tech dirty bomb that would use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material and sow panic.

Obama held a special summit session to coordinate the overall fight against the Daesh terror group. He touted gains against the group in Iraq and Syria, which he said were forcing it to lash out elsewhere, and called for stepped-up efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters to and from the battlefield.

Also looming over the summit was continuing concern about North Korea. Obama joined South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday in vowing to ramp up pressure on Pyongyang in response to its recent nuclear and missile tests.

But So Se Pyong, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told Reuters on Friday that Pyongyang will pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile programme in defiance of the United States and its allies, saying there is now a state of "semi-war" on the divided peninsula.

YEREVAN/BAKU — Fierce clashes left at least 30 Azerbaijani and Armenian soldiers dead Saturday as Russia and the West urged an immediate ceasefire after a major escalation in violence over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian said 18 Armenian troops were killed and some 35 wounded in the "largest-scale hostilities" since a 1994 truce ended a war that saw Armenian-backed fighters seize the territory from Azerbaijan. 

Sarkisian did not specify if the troops were from the forces of unrecognised Karabakh — which claims independence but is backed by Yerevan — or Armenia's army. 

Earlier Azerbaijan's defence ministry said that 12 of its soldiers were killed in the clashes and a military helicopter shot down.

The surge in fighting over the disputed territory reportedly also claimed the lives of one Armenian and one Azeri civilian after the arch foes accused each other of unleashing heavy weaponry across the volatile frontline.

Armenia accused Azerbaijan of launching a "massive attack along the Karabakh frontline using tanks, artillery, and helicopters" on Friday night.

Azerbaijan, however, insisted it had counter-attacked after coming under fire from "large-calibre artillery and grenade-launchers".

Sarkisian said that clashes were continuing Saturday evening "in the north and south" of the frontline but insisted the "armed forces of Karabakh are in control of the situation".

Ethnic Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized control of the mountainous Nagorny Karabakh region in the early 1990s war that claimed some 30,000 lives and the foes have never signed a peace deal despite the 1994 ceasfire.

The region is still internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan and the two sides frequently exchange fire across the front, but the latest episode marked a surge in violence and sparked frantic appeals for peace from international powers. 

Azeri forces claimed that they had taken control of several strategic heights and a village in the Armenian-controlled territory, but Yerevan denied the claim as "disinformation". 

Ceasefire calls 

Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an immediate end to fighting along the frontline, the Kremlin said. 

"President Putin calls on the parties in the conflict to observe an immediate ceasefire and exercise restraint in order to prevent further casualties," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies. 

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu held phone talks with their counterparts in Armenia and Azerbaijan to urge a de-escalation in the fighting. 

Meanwhile, mediators from a group made up of representatives from Russia, the United States, France and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has been trying to negotiation a settlement, expressed "grave concern". 

The European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that the reports of heavy fighting were "deeply worrying" and called on all sides to "avoid any further actions or statements that could result in escalation".

Azerbaijan's strongman President Ilham Aliyev also spoke by phone to ally President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which the Turkish leader expressed "solidarity" with Azerbaijan, Aliyev press office said. 

Energy-rich Azerbaijan, whose military spending has in the past exceeded Armenia's entire state budget, has repeatedly threatened to take back the breakaway region by force if negotiations fail to yield results. Moscow-backed Armenia says it could crush any offensive.

The last big flare-up occurred in November 2014 when Azerbaijan shot down an Armenian military helicopter. 

US Vice President Joe Biden met this week separately with both Aliyev and Sarkisian, as they attended a nuclear summit in Washington. He urged a peaceful settlement to the dispute.

Biden "expressed concern about continued violence, called for dialogue, and emphasised the importance of a comprehensive settlement for the long-term stability, security, and prosperity of the region", the White House said.