UAE: Accusations Over Rejection to Accept Syrian Refugees Unfair

CAIRO (Sputnik) — The foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Anwar Gargash, has said that criticism towards the Arab countries from a number of media and political organizations over refusal to accept refugees from Syria is unfair.

Gargash made a statement during a ministerial-level meeting of the Arab League that took place in Cairo on Sunday.

"We see criticism that does not correspond to the reality and a suspicious distortion of positions of many Arab countries regarding Syrian refugees from a number of political and informational circles," the minister said.

Gargash claimed that the UAE had hosted 100,000 Syrians since the beginning of the four-year-long conflict in the country and provided a financial aid in amount of $530 million to Damascus.

Several Western media have criticized the Persian Gulf countries with the highest per capita income for their unwillingness to give refuge to Syrians fleeing war in their country. Human Rights Watch (HRW) Middle East and North Africa director Sarah Leah Whitson has also condemned Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar for their alleged avoidance to host Syrian refugees.

Meanwhile, some 500,000 migrants, mainly from war-torn regions of the Middle East and North Africa, have arrived in Europe since the beginning of 2015, and their number is constantly increasing.

Interior ministers from the EU’s 28 states will meet in Brussels on Monday to discuss a proposal set out last week by President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker to redistribute 160,000 asylum seekers across the bloc.