Jordan’s Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz said that his country would not receive new refugees from Syria under any circumstances.
In a press statement after meeting on Tuesday with Parliament Speaker Atef Al-Tarawneh and the heads of the parliamentary blocs, Razzaz said that Jordan has taken more than it can handle in receiving refugees and would not be able to accept more of them.
He added that the Jordanian border was tightly secured thanks to the Jordanian Army and security forces.
“We are working for a political solution to the Syrian crisis, and are concerned with the protection of our brothers in Syria, so we make every effort to reach a solution to the crisis,” Razzaz said.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Tuesday that Jordan’s borders would remain closed and that the United Nations could help Syrians fleeing violence inside their country.
“There is no presence of displaced people at our border and the movement has been toward the inside,” Reuters quoted Safadi as saying on his Twitter account.
Earlier on Tuesday, the United Nations said that at least 45,000 people had fled fighting in Syria’s southwestern Deraa province, heading toward the border with Jordan.
Jordan’s Minister for Media Affairs Joumana Ghunaimat told local news agencies that her country could no longer receive more refugees.
“We have received enough numbers of Syrian refugees; we already have a large number and we simply cannot receive more,” she said.
Jordan receives about 650,000 Syrian refugees registered with the United Nations, while the total number of Syrians, who have fled to Jordan since the beginning of the crisis in their country in 2011, amounts to 1.3 million people.
