World

THE HAGUE — The Dutch "No" to an EU pact with Ukraine dealt a fresh blow to European unity Thursday, handing eurosceptics a symbolic victory ahead of Britain's in-out referendum in June.

European leaders were licking their wounds after preliminary results showed that over 61 per cent of those who voted were opposed to the Brussels-Kiev agreement in what was seen as a wider barometer of anti-EU feeling.

"The 'No' camp clearly won," Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte — whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency — said late Wednesday.

Ukraine itself vowed the results would not be an obstacle to its push for closer ties with the 28-member European Union away from the orbit of former Soviet master Russia.

But European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker, who had warned ahead of the referendum a "No" could open the doors to "a "continental crisis", was said to be saddened by the outcome.

The bloc is already battling deep divisions over its handling of the continent's biggest migration crisis since World War II and financial meltdowns in several member countries including Greece.

British Prime Minister David Cameron nevertheless voiced hope the vote would not boost the campaign for Britain to leave the bloc in the June 23 referendum.

"It is important that the European institutions and the Dutch government listen carefully to what people are saying, to try and understand that and to try and work with that," Cameron said.

But he added: "I don't think it has any effect on us because we have a bigger question."

However, Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-EU UK Independence Party, hailed it as a "tremendous victory for democracy".

"Time and again, voters are choosing to reject Brussels whenever they are consulted about the EU," added Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, another pro-Brexit group.

The Dutch referendum, organised by eurosceptic groups, was seen as an embarrassment for Rutte's coalition government, which backed a "Yes" vote, and leaves it with a dilemma of what to do next.

Dutch news agency ANP projected that while only 32 per cent of the electorate had cast their ballot, it was enough to ensure the non-binding referendum is valid and must be considered by the government.

"We are now going to look at the process step-by-step," Rutte said, adding a final decision on what to do "may still take weeks".

Facing a fresh headache on the bloc's legitimacy, EU President Donald Tusk said he would be in contact with Rutte.

"I need to hear what conclusions he and his government will draw from the referendum and what his intentions will be," Tusk said. 

Rutte "is in a tricky situation", said political analyst Claes de Vreese.

"He will now quickly have to figure out what the biggest gripes are of those who voted no and see if he can do something about it in Brussels,” De Vreese told AFP.

"Eurosceptics will of course use this as an example of growing discord over the European Union," De Vreese added.

But he and other analysts warned that given the low turnout, the "No" vote was not representative of all 12.5 million eligible voters.

The Netherlands is now the only member in the 28-nation EU not to have ratified the association agreement with Ukraine, which has already been given the thumbs up by both houses of the Dutch parliament.

Ukrainian President Petro Porosheko said the Dutch vote was not a "strategic obstacle" on the path to closer ties to Europe.

"We will not turn off the road of European integration. Ukraine and freedom cannot be stopped," he said, adding that the vote appeared largely directed against the EU itself.

"This is an attack on the unity of Europe, an attack on the spread of European values."

EU officials noted that in any case, the two-year-old treaty, which mainly deals with boosting trade, has already gone into force provisionally.

But Russian leaders gloated at the "No" vote.

"Results of the Dutch referendum on the EU-Ukraine association agreement indicate Europeans' opinion of the Ukrainian political system," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev tweeted.

BRUSSELS — A divided European Union on Wednesday unveiled a fresh plan to shake up its failed asylum policy and force countries to share the burden of its unprecedented migrant crisis.

Just days after Greece began expelling migrants to Turkey under a controversial swap deal, a top EU official admitted that the bloc's current system is "not working".

"We need to reform our European asylum system," Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans told reporters in Brussels, as Europe battles its worst migration crisis since World War II.

The influx of more than 1 million migrants fleeing war and poverty has put the bloc's cherished border-free rules under severe strain and sparked sharp divisions among the 28 EU nations.

Under the bloc's existing rules — the so-called Dublin system — migrants seeking asylum must apply in the country where they first arrive and are returned there if they move to somewhere else in the EU.

But critics have slammed this system as obsolete and unfair to Greece and Italy, where most of the 1.25 million Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and other migrants entered the bloc last year. 

The rules in any case fell apart in 2015 as Greece and Italy, overwhelmed by the crisis, simply waved migrants onwards to countries where they wanted asylum, like Germany.

'Neither fair, nor sustainable' 

"This is neither fair, nor sustainable," Timmermans said as he outlined two possible new approaches.

The first idea, dubbed "Dublin plus", would be to keep the existing system but add a "corrective fairness mechanism" to redistribute migrants from a member state grappling with a sudden influx of refugees.

A majority of countries support this option, a European diplomat told AFP.

A second, more radical, proposal would be to automatically distribute migrants across the EU based on member states' population, wealth and capacity to take in newcomers. 

This option had the support of Germany and Sweden, which have taken in the lion's share of migrants, the diplomat said.

"Both options will provide much needed solidarity," Timmermans added.

But EU states have already struggled to implement an emergency scheme agreed last September to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy. Only 1,100 of these have been resettled so far.

The delays have been blamed on a range of factors — from governments trying to filter out jihadists from among the refugees following the terror attacks in Brussels and Paris to a lack of housing and educational services.

Sceptics say political foot-dragging has also played a part.

Tomas Prouza, the Czech state secretary for EU affairs, said the proposals appear to revive the same quota scheme that eastern European states in particular already rejected in the previous relocation plan.

"How long will @EU Commission keep riding this dead horse instead of working on things that really help?" Prouza tweeted.

But German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the proposals "go in the right direction" and that the debate will likely focus on how to distribute the migrants.

John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's director for Europe and Central Asia, said the proposals on sharing responsibility head "broadly in the right direction". 

"But there is potential for plenty of devils to lurk in the detail, particularly if they rely significantly on sanctions and coercion," he said.

Two-week deportation 'lag' 

A last-minute flurry of asylum applications by migrants desperate to avoid expulsion from Greece to Turkey will likely cause a two-week "lag" in deportations under a controversial deal between Brussels and Ankara, Greek official Nikos Xydakis said Wednesday.

Around 200 migrants were deported Monday under the deal struck last month calling for sending back to Turkey all "irregular migrants" arriving in Greece after March 20.

But the returns system has stalled since then.

Under a "one-for-one" provision, for every Syrian returned, another Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey in an EU country, with numbers capped at 72,000.

Human rights watchdogs say the scheme is badly flawed, and on Tuesday the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said it was concerned for 13 people who may have been unable to register for asylum before they were deported.

The EU-Turkey deal, as well as a series of border restrictions along the Balkans migrant route, appear to have sharply reduced the number of new arrivals in recent weeks, and Germany said it could lift its controls on the frontier with Austria if the trend continues.

Pope Francis will turn the spotlight on Europe's handling of the crisis with an expected visit on April 14 or 15 to Lesbos — part of the Greek island chain where hundreds of thousands of people arrived last year.

TALYSH, Azerbaijan — Elmira Bagiryan, a resident of a village at the epicentre of four days of fighting between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces, was leaving even though the gunfire had stopped.

"We are afraid that the shooting will begin again," she said as she prepared to board a car laden with carpets, pillows, blankets and furniture from her home.

The village of Talysh was briefly occupied by Azeri troops during four days of battles over Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region which subsided on Tuesday afternoon when both sides agreed a ceasefire.

Russia said it had played a lead role in brokering a halt to the violence, hosting a meeting between military chiefs from Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The fighting was the most intense since a war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the early 1990s, and raised fears of a return to all-out war in a region that serves as a corridor for pipelines taking oil and gas to world markets.

The guns had fallen silent in Talysh, a few kilometres from the Azeri town of Barda on the northernmost edge of separatist-held territory, on Wednesday afternoon. Ethnic Armenian troops, firmly back in control, milled around, smiling.

There were signs, though, of the ferocity of the fighting of previous days. Several houses had been destroyed by shell fire. The hulk of a burned out car lay by the road. Nearby were the carcasses of several dead cows.

Bagiryan, a grey-haired ethnic Armenian in her early 60s, said three villagers had been killed.

Close to tears, she said she had spent days and nights in the cellar of a neighbour's house, taking refuge from the shelling.

Quiet had returned on Tuesday when the ceasefire was agreed, but she planned to leave all the same.

Other residents also were using the lull as an opportunity to get out. On the roads in the area, cars and trucks loaded with belongings were heading away from the front line.

Old tensions erupt

The previous war between the two ex-Soviet states killed thousands on both sides and displaced hundreds of thousands.

It ended with a truce in 1994, although there have been sporadic flare-ups since. The ceasefire was shattered over the weekend, with Azerbaijan's army and the Armenian-backed separatists of Nagorno-Karabakh exchanging heavy fire using artillery, tanks, rocket systems and helicopters. Dozens of soldiers were killed.

Azerbaijan's armed forces said they had seized patches of territory from the separatists, among them the Leletepe Heights, on the southeastern side of the conflict zone towards the border with Iran.

On Wednesday, an Azeri flag was flying on the mountain and underfoot were spent bullet casings. No shooting could be heard, according to a Reuters reporter who visited the spot.

Azeri officials said the ethnic Armenian forces, before they were dislodged, had been using the heights to launch artillery strikes on Azeri villages.

Russian role

Speaking at a meeting in Berlin with Armenia's president, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said urgent efforts were needed to make sure the ceasefire would last.

"Above all, everything must be done such that more blood is not spilled and lives lost," Merkel said.

Mediation in the conflict has for years been assigned jointly to envoys from France, Russia and the United States. But Moscow has stepped up its diplomatic role in the past few days.

Officials from both sides said the truce was agreed at a meeting in Moscow between the chiefs of staff of the Azeri and Armenian militaries. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had telephoned the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia to urge them to agree a ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were both heading to Azerbaijan's capital, Baku, in the next few days.

Russia does not have the same direct interest in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as it does in other territorial disputes in the former Soviet Union. In Georgia and Ukraine, it provided direct support to separatists.

However, its active diplomacy over the past few days is consistent with a push by the Kremlin to assert its influence, especially in places where the administration of US President Barack Obama has elected to take a more low-key role.

LONDON/REYKJAVIK — Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson is to step down after leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm showed his wife owned an offshore company with big claims on collapsed Icelandic banks, his party said.

Gunnlaugsson became the first prominent casualty from the revelations in the so-called Panama Papers, which have cast light on the financial arrangements of an array of politicians and public figures across the globe and the companies and financial institutions they use.

Earlier on Tuesday, Gunnlaugsson had asked Iceland's president to dissolve parliament in the face of a looming no-confidence vote and mass street protests over the revelations. Such a move would almost certainly lead to a new election.

The deputy leader of his Progressive Party, Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson, told reporters the party will suggest to its coalition partners in the Independence Party that he should become the new prime minister.

With the fallout from the leaks reverberating across the globe, British Prime Minister David Cameron also came under fire from opponents who accused him of allowing a rich elite to dodge their taxes.

And in China, the Beijing government dismissed as "groundless" reports that the families of President Xi Jinping and other current and former Chinese leaders were linked to offshore accounts.

The more than 11.5 million documents were leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. Among those named in them are friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the leaders of China, Britain and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine.

The papers have caused public outrage over how the world's rich and powerful are able to stash their cash and avoid taxes while many people suffer austerity and hardship.

Thousands gathered outside the Icelandic parliament in Reykjavik on Monday to protest about what the opposition said was Gunnlaugsson’s failure to disclose a conflict of interest over his wife’s offshore company, which has big claims on Iceland’s collapsed banks.

The prime minister has stressed his wife’s overseas assets were taxed in Iceland.

A government spokesman has said the claims against Iceland’s collapsed banks held by the firm owned by Gunnlaugsson’s wife — totalled more than 500 million Icelandic crowns ($4.1 million).

Iceland’s main commercial banks collapsed as the global financial crisis hit in 2008 and many Icelanders have blamed the North Atlantic island nation’s politicians for not reining in the banks’ debt-fuelled binge and averting a deep recession.

Icelandic government bonds saw their biggest sell-off in five months due to the uncertainty, with yields on 10-year bonds jumping 15.6 basis points to 5.891 per cent.

‘Abuse must stop’

In Britain, the leader of the opposition Labour Party demanded that the government tackle tax havens, saying it was time Cameron stopped allowing “the super-rich elite” to dodge taxes.

“There cannot be one set of tax rules for the wealthy elite and another for the rest of us,” Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said. “The unfairness and abuse must stop.”

He said Britain had a huge responsibility since many tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands, are British overseas territories, while others such as Jersey or the Isle of Man are British crown dependencies.

According to media that have seen Mossack Fonseca’s files, more than half of the 200,000 companies set up by the firm were registered in the British Virgin Islands, where details of ownership do not have to be filed with the authorities.

Cameron has cast himself as a champion in the fight against tax evasion in British-linked territories. But he was put on the spot by the leaks, which named his late father and members of the ruling Conservative Party among the list of clients who used Mossack Fonseca’s services.

Cameron said he did not own any shares or have offshore funds.

“I have a salary as prime minister, and I have some savings, which I get some interest from, and I have a house,” he said. “I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that.”

Other leading figures and financial institutions responded to the leak with denials of any wrongdoing as prosecutors and regulators began a review of the investigation by the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and other media organisations.

Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands are among nations that have started inquiries.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said Paris would put Panama back on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions. The Central American nation is one of the most secretive of the world’s offshore havens and has refused to sign up to a global transparency initiative.

Mossack Fonseca has set up more than 240,000 offshore companies for clients around the globe and denies any wrongdoing. It says it is the victim of a campaign against privacy and that media reports misrepresent the nature of its business.

Mossack Fonseca’s Hong Kong office said on Tuesday the firm had never been charged with or formally investigated for criminal wrongdoing in its nearly 40 years of operation.

“We do not advise clients on how to operate their businesses. We don’t link ourselves in any way to companies we help incorporate,” the firm said in a statement.

“Excluding the professional fees we earn, we don’t take possession of clients’ money, or otherwise have anything to do with any of the direct financial aspects related to operating these businesses.”

‘Groundless accusation’

The reports also pointed to offshore companies linked to the families of Chinese President Xi and other powerful figures.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, when asked if the government would investigate tax affairs of those mentioned in the documents, told reporters the ministry would not comment on “these groundless accusations”.

Beijing also moved to limit local access to coverage of the matter. State media denounced Western reporting on it as biased against non-Western leaders.

The Hong Kong government said its tax department would take “necessary actions” based on any information it received.

Credit Suisse and HSBC, two of the world’s largest wealth managers, dismissed suggestions they were actively using offshore structures to help clients evade tax.

Both were among the banks that helped set up complex structures that make it hard for tax collectors and investigators to track the flow of money, according to ICIJ.

The famous personalities drawn into the affair also included soccer star Lionel Messi. Spanish tax authorities said they are investigating allegations of tax irregularities involving Barcelona’s Argentinian striker after the release of the documents.

Messi’s family released a statement denying wrongdoing and saying it “never used the company” involved in the matter. 

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.