Speaking on a two-day visit to Cyprus, after meeting his counterpart Nicos Anastasiades, Andrzej Duda told a news conference he had briefed his host on “the problem on our frontier with Belarus.”
“Sadly the Belarus authorities are behaving irresponsibly, totally at odds with all international standards, by simply bringing about a migrant crisis as they push migrants towards our border,” Duda said.
He told reporters: “We are protecting this frontier, fulfilling our duties, because this is not merely a Polish matter; this is also the border of the EU, of the Schengen zone.”
Duda added Poland was hoping the EU’s border agency, Frontex, “will support us,” but also that “there will be solidarity within the EU and that the whole bloc is going to back us on this issue, including by discouraging Minsk from generating this problem.”
He noted that Latvia and Lithuania "have also faced the problem" of migrant pressure.
Meanwhile, the Polish Border Guard announced a record 667 illegal attempts to enter the country from neighbouring Belarus the previous day.
Border officials detained seven Turkish nationals as well as 13 other individuals, including three Poles, for aiding such attempts, the agency tweeted on Thursday.
Since August, the Polish border service has prevented over 14,000 attempts to illegally cross into Poland from Belarus, and its detention centres currently hold upwards of 1,500 illegal immigrants, state news agency PAP reported.
Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Wednesday said his country enjoyed full support within the European Union as it worked to defend itself against a migrant influx and a "hybrid war" being waged by Belarus.
Poland and fellow EU members Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have accused Belarus' strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko of organising a wave of illegal migrants seeking to enter the bloc as part of what officials have called a "hybrid war."
The EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, visited Poland last week, agreeing with Warsaw’s arguments that “firm steps” were needed against Belarus, according to officials.
Also last week, Polish lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to extend a state of emergency in parts of two regions along the country's eastern border with Belarus by two months amid a growing migrant surge.
The state of emergency gives authorities broader powers to monitor and control the movement of people on the Polish-Belarusian border, which is also the eastern border of the European Union.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, TVP Info