(MENAFN- Saudi Press Agency)
Amman, Rajab 19, 1439, Apr 5, 2018, SPA -- Germany's new Foreign Minister Heiko Maas visited Jordan on Thursday to hold talks with its leadership, tour a refugee camp and visit German troops stationed in the country, dpa reported.
Maas met with Prince Faisal bin Al-Hussein, King Abdullah II's brother, to talk about cooperation between Germany and Jordan.
Jordan is host to more than 600,000 refugees from neighbouring Syria, according to official figures. Factoring in unregistered refugees, however, the country is believed to be accommodating as many as 1.2 million.
After the meeting with Jordan's leadership, Maas visited the al-Azraq refugee camp, Jordan's second largest and home to 37,000 refugees.
The minister also weighed in on the latest immigration debate in Germany, saying that the government would stick to its goal of allowing 1,000 refugees per month to follow family members already approved for asylum in Germany.
Maas also visited the German embassy's visa office in Amman, which handled 15,000 applications last year, many of them from Syrian refugees.
"I quite simply wanted to get a picture of it for myself, of how it works in practice. Because it is no use writing nice laws in Berlin that are then impracticable on the ground," he said.
Maas also visited around 300 German soldiers stationed in the neighbouring Muwaffaq Salti air base, from where they support a US-led military coalition in the fight against Islamic State militants in the region.
--SPA
02:34 LOCAL TIME 23:34 GMT
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