EU member Cyprus said today it was willing to take in up to 300 refugees to help ease the crisis facing the European Union but preferred them to be Christians.
"We have already stated that 260, a maximum of 300, people can be taken in" by the small eastern Mediterranean island, Interior Minister Socrates Hasikos told state radio.
"We would seek for them to be Orthodox Christians ... that's what we would prefer," he said, adding that this would allow them to "integrate better" with the island's predominantly Greek Cypriot population.
Hasikos later issued a statement clarifying that other EU members have also said they would prefer to take in Christians and that Cyprus has in the past rescued and received refugees "without discrimination on ethnicity or religion".
Europe has been facing an unprecedented influx this summer of people seeking refuge, many of them from war-torn Syria, and the European Commission is to unveil Wednesday a proposal for mandatory EU quotas to relocate 120,000 refugees.
Cyprus lies just 100 kilometres off the Syrian coast but has so far avoided a mass influx of refugees, with most preferring to bypass the island for the European mainland.
A court today in the southern port of Larnaca remanded into custody for eight days three men arrested after the weekend rescue off Cyprus of 115 refugees fleeing Syria.
The suspects, two Syrians and a Lebanese, face charges of people trafficking, facilitating unauthorised entry into Cyprus and money laundering, having charged each refugee USD 3,500 for the journey, police said.
The refugees, including 54 women and children, were on a small fishing boat that ran into trouble late on Saturday off the Larnaca coast, three days after leaving the Syrian port of Tartus.
They were rescued on Sunday, with nearly 90 people taken to a reception camp outside Nicosia and 20 others who requested asylum transferred to a centre near Larnaca.
At lease five unaccompanied children were also placed under the protection of welfare services.
Refugees today at the Kokkinotrimithia camp outside Nicosia received aid packages while the Cyprus Red Cross called for donations of clothing, toys, footwear and baby food.
