Hungary offers to take rejected migrants back to Turkey

Hungary's right-wing government on Thursday offered to help return migrants who had been refused asylum in fellow EU countries to Turkey.

 "If necessary, we are ready to allow trains carrying illegal migrants from the west to Greece or Turkey via our territory. We could even offer up (Hungarian) trains," Interior Minister Sandor Pinter told journalists after meeting his Serbian counterpart, Nebojsa Stefanic.

 The pair had visited the Roezke border crossing near the Hungarian-Serbian frontier.

 The checkpoint had been the scene of violent clashes between migrants and Hungarian police on September 16, a day after Budapest shut its Serbian border with a razor-wire fence.

 Tens of thousands of people had rushed up from Serbia via Greece and Macedonia hoping to enter Hungary before it sealed its border.

 In mid-October, the Hungarian government also closed its border with Croatia, diverting the human flow toward small bloc member Slovenia.

 More than 600,000 people, mainly fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have made the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean, travelling through Turkey, Greece and the western Balkans, as they seek to reach northern Europe.

 Hungary considers that a majority of those arriving at its borders are economic migrants, not refugees in need of protection.