EU may deny asylum to Pakistanis

Published October 20, 2003

PARIS, Oct 19: Pakistan is expected to be among the countries whose residents will no longer be authorized to file political asylum in all the EU countries.

Inaugurating the first day of the G5 anti-terrorism summit at the French resort city of La Baule, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that Paris was “taking very seriously” the threats issued on Arab satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera by Osama bin Laden.

The G5 summit has been convened to take a number of decisions with regard to the security future of the European Union, and will notably issue a list of the “sure countries” from which candidates for political asylum in the EU will now be refused authorization to reside in the present 15 European countries, and, as of next year, the 25 member EU states.

POPULATION FLOWS: An international colloquium just held in Paris on immigration and population flows has revealed that the European continent will see even more immigration in the coming years than it has in its recent history.

The colloquium also revealed that at the present moment, there are more than 40 million immigrants in mainland Europe alone, with 8 million in France, of which 5 million are Muslims.

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