GERMAN – Party leaders of Germany’s ruling coalition have agreed on Thursday on plans to establish special registration centers for refugees in Germany, with an aim to speed up asylum procedures for those who have little chance to get asylum. The plan was announced at a joint press conference by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as coalition party heads Sigmar Gabriel and Horst Seehofer after their summit meeting over refugees on Thursday afternoon, ending a coalition internal dispute lasting several weeks. Merkel, Gabriel and Seehofer have already met on Sunday to discuss the current refugee situation, but failed to hammer out a compromise deal after Gabriel.

Head of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), dismissed the idea of setting up so-called transit zones on German borders to filter out migrants who have little chance of gaining asylum, deepening a rift within Merkel’s ruling coalition. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party Christian Social Union (CSU), led by Seehofer, hoped to use the transit zones – proposed border holding camps – to process asylum more efficiently, while the SPD criticized the transit zones as “giant prisons.” Instead of transit zones, the three party leaders have agreed on Thursday on the plan to set up three to five special reception centers across Germany.(Xinhua/Zhang Fan)…[+]