ATHENS (Sputnik) — NATO will return migrants from the Aegean Sea to Turkey in order to cope with undocumented migration, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said Thursday.
Earlier in the day, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance would assist European nations to cope with the refugee and migrant crisis.
"First of all, the achieved decision stipulates that NATO forces, which will be involved in [operations] in the Aegean Sea and near the Turkish coastline, will ensure that the detained migrants will be returned back to Turkey," Kammenos said.
He added that the future deployment of NATO forces in the region was expected to focus on tackling human trafficking.
Currently, many European countries are struggling to find a solution to the massive migrant crisis, as hundreds of thousands of individuals flee the Middle East and North Africa. Many refugees are trying to make their way to prosperous EU states using Greece as a transit country.
