Germany’s acting interior minister, Nancy Faeser, headed to Amman to discuss migration and security issues with Jordanian government representatives.

Ms Faeser, who Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner accompanied, would meet with their Jordanian counterpart Mazin al-Farrayeh and Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi in Amman on Wednesday afternoon.

The visit came after U.S. President Donald Trump in early February proposed to resettle Gaza’s population of more than two million to Arab countries.

This would convert the war-torn coastal strip into the Middle East ‘Riviera’, a vision that has been widely rejected by Israel’s Arab neighbours, including Jordan.

During a visit to the White House on February 11, Jordan’s King Abdullah II firmly rejected the proposal.

Jordan has taken in about 1.3 million refugees from Syria as a result of the civil war that broke out in 2011, according to government estimates.

In early March, the Jordanian Ministry of Interior said that some 44,000 Syrian refugees had voluntarily returned to their homeland following the fall of long-time ruler Bashar al-Assad in December.

At a donor conference in Brussels last week, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock and Development Minister Svenja Schulze pledged €300 million ($323 million) as additional funding.

The fund was primarily to support humanitarian aid, civil society and education in Syria while assisting Syrian refugees and host communities in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. 

(dpa/NAN)