Germany ambassador says the migrant crisis is changing the face of Europe

Oren Dorell | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Europe's migrant crisis caught the continent’s leaders unprepared and is “a huge challenge that will not be over soon,” Germany’s ambassador to Washington, Peter Wittig, said Friday.

A majority of the migrants flooding into Europe are fleeing Syria, which has been torn by a bloody civil war, Wittig told a group of reporters.

Russia this week said it was increasing its military support for the Syrian regime, a move that raises the prospect of prolonging the war and prompting more refugees to seek safe haven in Europe.

The massive number of people fleeing war and poverty across the Middle East and Africa will change Europe into a land of immigrants, and is posing a challenge to European unity, as nations fight over what to do about the hundreds of thousands pouring in, Wittig said.

While Germany has agreed to accept 800,000 migrants this year, other nations in the 28-member European Union have been unable or unwilling to handle the flow of migrants into and through their countries. On Friday, central European officials balked at accepting a quota system for dispersing 120,000 migrants proposed by Germany and E.U. President Jean-Claude Juncker.

“We are witnessing here in a very short time span a transformation of Europe, especially Germany,” he said, “and that will change our lives.”

Wittig said Germany hopes the crisis will add urgency to solving the four-year Syrian conflict, which has pitted dictator Bashar Assad against a broad-based insurgency that gave rise to the militant Islamic State.

Russia said its military buildup in Syria is aimed at fighting the Islamic State, which has seized vast swaths of Syria and Iraq, and is the target of airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition. Moscow also has said that Assad's military is the only group capable of defeating the militants.

The United States, which wants Assad to step down, is training a rebel group to combat the Islamic State while U.S. leaders seek a political agreement that would unite Syria under new leadership.

Wittig said both Russia and Germany share a common interest in fighting terrorists, and the migrant crisis is increasing European interest in finding a political compromise to end the Syrian war.

While Russia has had a long security relationship with Assad, who has suffered recent losses in the war, its reasons for the recent build-up is unclear, he said. “Is this a step to fight (the Islamic State) or to beef up Assad? We don’t have a full picture.”