ATHENS: Greece on Friday was to enforce a three-month freeze on asylum claims from migrants arriving by boat from North Africa, to stem a surge from Libya that the government has called an “invasion.”

Conservative lawmakers, who hold a parliamentary majority, are expected to approve emergency legislation enforcing the temporary ban, allowing authorities to detain asylum seekers in camps for up to 18 months.

“We have made the difficult but absolutely necessary decision to temporarily suspend the examination process of asylum applications for those arriving by sea from North African countries,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement to German tabloid Bild on Friday.

“This decision sends a clear message, leaving no room for misinterpretation, to human trafficking networks: Greece is not an open transit route. The journey is dangerous, the outcome uncertain, and the money paid to smugglers ultimately wasted,” he said.

Greece’s migration ministry says over 14,000 migrants have reached the country this year, including over 2,000 in recent days from Libya.

“Greece cannot have boats totaling 1,000 people a day,” Migration Minister Thanos Plevris told Skai TV, adding that the country will undertake a “draconian revision” of how it deals with migrants.

Plevris – formerly a member of the far-right LAOS party and now part of Mitsotakis’s New Democracy party – has called the recent influx an “invasion from North Africa.”

The move has been criticized by rights groups as a violation of international and EU law, and opposition parties have called it unconstitutional.

Noting an “exceptional” situation, European Commission migration spokesperson Markus Lammert said on Thursday: “We are in close contact with the Greek authorities to obtain necessary information on these measures.”

Greece took similar steps in 2020 during a migration surge at its land border with Turkiye.

To manage the influx, the government could reopen camps built after the 2015 migration crisis, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said this week.

Mitsotakis also told parliament that it would build up to two additional camps on the island of Crete.

KUALA LUMPUR: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, their first in-person meeting at a time of simmering trade tensions between the two major powers.

Washington’s top diplomat is in Malaysia on his first trip to Asia since taking office, attending the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum alongside counterparts from Japan, China, South Korea, Russia, Australia, India, the European Union and Southeast Asian states.

His meeting with Wang comes amid escalating friction globally over US President Donald Trump’s tariffs offensive, with China this week warning the United States against reinstating hefty levies on its goods next month.

Beijing has also threatened to retaliate against nations that strike deals with the United States to cut China out of supply chains. Rubio’s visit is part of an effort to renew US focus on the Indo-Pacific region and look beyond conflicts in the Middle East and Europe that have consumed much of the Trump administration’s attention.

But that has been overshadowed by this week’s announcement of steep US tariffs on many Asian countries and US allies that include 25 percent on Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, 32 percent for Indonesia, 36 percent for Thailand and Cambodia and 40 percent on Myanmar and Laos.

Analysts said Rubio would be looking to press the case that the United States remains a better partner than China, Washington’s main strategic rival, during the visit. The State Department said Rubio met counterparts of Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia on Friday.

A day earlier, he told Southeast Asian foreign ministers the Indo-Pacific remained a focal point of US foreign policy.

China, initially singled out with tariffs exceeding 100 percent, has until August 12 to reach a deal with the White House to keep Trump from reinstating additional import curbs imposed during tit-for-tat tariff exchanges in April and May.

‘Bullying behavior’

China’s Wang has been fierce in his criticism of the United States in Kuala Lumpur and told Malaysia’s foreign minister the US tariffs were “typical unilateral bullying behavior” that no country should support or agree with, according to remarks released by Beijing on Friday.

He told Thailand’s foreign minister the tariffs had been abused and “undermined the free trade system, and interfered with the stability of the global production and supply chain.”

During a meeting with his Cambodian counterpart, he said the US levies were an attempt to deprive Southeast Asian countries of their legitimate right to development.

“We believe that Southeast Asian countries have the ability to cope with complex situations, adhere to principled positions, and safeguard their own interests,” Wang said, according to China’s foreign ministry.

The foreign secretary of US ally the Philippines said on Friday President Ferdinand Marcos Jr would meet Trump in Washington this month and discussions would include the increase in the US tariff on its former colony.

Rubio told reporters on Thursday he would also likely raise with Wang US concerns over China’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine.

“The Chinese clearly have been supportive of the Russian effort and I think that generally, they’ve been willing to help them as much as they can without getting caught,” he said.

Rubio met together with Japanese foreign minister and South Korea’s first vice foreign minister in Malaysia on Friday, at a time of concerns about the tariffs.

According to a US State Department statement, they discussed regional security and a strengthening of their “indispensable trilateral partnership” including security and resilience of critical technologies and supply chains, energy, trusted digital infrastructure, and shipbuilding.