David Cameron Says UK Will Never Accept EU Asylum Approach

LONDON (Sputnik) — The United Kingdom will never join the European approach in providing migrants with asylum, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday.

"There is no prospect to Britain joining the common asylum process in Europe. We have our own asylum approach, our own way of doing things, keeping our borders. Again it underlines the best of both worlds, the special status that we have," Cameron said ahead of a meeting of the European Union and Turkey's leadership in Brussels.

According to Cameron, it is in UK's interests to help the European Union secure its external borders.

"That is why we are sending British ships [to the Aegean Sea] to do just that," the prime minister stressed.

Earlier in the day, UK media reported that the Royal Navy would deploy a landing ship, RFA Mounts Bay to help a NATO mission control migrant smugglers in the Aegean Sea. The ship will be sent with a group of marines and a Wildcat helicopter on board.

Europe has been beset by a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants fleeing their home countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty. Many of them take the West Balkan route, which crosses the Aegean Sea and Greece, to travel to wealthier EU states.

UK citizens are set to vote on June 23 in a referendum on the country's EU membership. Cameron earlier said he had managed to negotiate the country being exempt from the EU "superstate" principle, the introduction of tough restrictions on access to the UK welfare system for European migrants, protection for its economy and rejection of the euro as the bloc's official single currency.