EU ministers meeting in Lisbon over refugee quotas

EU countries were set to try to bridge differences on Europe's escalating refugee crisis at a foreign ministers' meeting on Friday, with the shocking image of a dead Syrian toddler washed up on a beach driving calls for binding refugee quotas.

The heartbreaking images of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying dead in the surf - and his father's emotional account of how the little boy and his four-year-old brother "slipped through my hands" - have ramped up pressure on political leaders to address Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Under-fire British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose country has been accused of failing to help shoulder the burden, announced a plan on Friday to take in more Syrian refugees.

"Given the scale of the crisis and the suffering of the people, I can announce today that we will do more, and will welcome thousands more Syrian refugees under existing schemes which we'll keep under review," Cameron said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande on Thursday urged EU members to accept "binding" refugee quotas.

In Hungary, meanwhile, a tense standoff continued between police and hundreds of refugees blocked by police from carrying on their journey west towards Germany.

On Thursday, the police allowed the refugees to board a train in Budapest bound for the Austrian border. But their journey ended just west of the capital in Bicske, where police tried to disembark them and take them to a refugee processing camp.

An estimated 200 to 300 people, angry at what they saw as Hungary's trickery, refused to get off the train, where they spent the night.

EU foreign ministers were to meet later in Luxembourg to discuss the crisis, which has split the bloc between countries like Germany advocating greater solidarity with the refugees and nations such as Hungary that have taken a hardline approach.

In a statement on Friday, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said the EU faced "a defining moment".

Referring to the pictures of little Aylan which have dominated newspaper front pages this week, he said: "Europe cannot go on responding to this crisis with a piecemeal or incremental approach."

"No country can do it alone, and no country can refuse to do its part," he added, calling for a "mass relocation programme, with the mandatory participation of all EU member states" that would take up to 200,000 refugees.

'Moral responsibilities' 

Europe is facing a huge influx on all sides, with more than 350,000 people crossing the Mediterranean in flimsy boats this year alone, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Merkel and Hollande said Thursday they had agreed the EU members should take in a minimum number of migrants.

"We agree that... we need binding quotas within the European Union to share the burden. That is the principle of solidarity," Merkel told reporters during a visit to the Swiss capital.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will next week unveil a plan for the relocation of at least 120,000 more refugees to ease the burden on frontline EU nations Greece, Italy and Hungary, a European source told AFP.

EU president Donald Tusk called on member states to resettle at least 100,000 refugees - far above the current agreement for 32,000.

Putin: 'Failed policies' to blame

Meanwhile, world leaders have been commenting on the refugee crisis, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott arguing that the terrible scenes across the Mediterranean were evidence of the validity of their respective policies.

Putin on Friday called Europe's migrant crisis a predictable result of its policies in the Middle East and said he had personally warned of the consequences.

"I consider that this crisis was absolutely expected," Putin said in comments broadcast on national television.

"We in Russia, and your humble servant in particular, several years ago said that there would be big problems if our so-called Western partners followed this mistaken - as I always said - policy."

Russia is a long-standing ally of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, which it is continuing to support militarily.

The West supports the mainstream opposition, which has been overtaken in many parts of the country by militant groups like the Islamic State group (IS, formerly ISIS) that are being targeted by a US-led campaign of airstrikes.

Moscow, which is not part of the campaign, has proposed extending the anti-IS coalition to include Assad's government and its allies - a suggestion that has been summarily dismissed by the West.

Australian PM Abbott stood by Canberra's hardline immigration policies, despite the outpouring of sympathy towards refugees in the wake of the death of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi.

Photographs of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying dead on the sand as Europe grapples with its worst refugee crisis since World War II showed the "evil" nature of people-smuggling, Abbott said.

Australia's conservative government introduced a military-led operation to turn back boats carrying asylum-seekers attempting to arrive on the mainland after it came to power in September 2013.

"It was an absolutely heart-rending photograph and I don't think any parent could see that photograph without being devastated," the Australian leader told reporters in Wodonga south of Canberra.

"I know that there has been quite a bit of interest in the policies that Australia has put in place, because if you do stop the people-smuggling trade... obviously you end the deaths at sea.

"The most compassionate thing you can do in the medium and long-term is to close down this evil trade."

Under Australia's immigration policy, asylum-seekers that arrive are sent to the Pacific islands of Nauru and Papua New Guinea to be processed and denied resettlement in Australia even if they are found to be refugees.

Canberra has declared the policy a success and in August marked a year since the last successful boat arrival, adding that 20 vessels carrying 633 asylum-seekers have been turned back since 2013.

Earlier this year the government said there have been no reported deaths at sea.

But rights groups have said Australia's policy of sending asylum-seekers to offshore camps has been a "disaster" in the two years it has been in place.

Abbott added that a call by Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce to boost the number of Syrian refugees his nation takes in was already in place after Australia last year said it would resettle 2,200 Iraqis and 2,200 Syrians fleeing violence.

"It's precisely because we have got much better border controls in place, we've established much better border security that we are in a position to increase our refugee and humanitarian intake," the prime minister said.

According to Australia's parliamentary library, 1,007 Syrians were granted offshore refugee and humanitarian visas last year out of a total of 11,016 visas granted.