Hungary says it has approved two of the nearly 4,900 asylum requests it has received from refugees since it closed its border with Serbia with a razor-wire fence on Sept. 15. Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, says as of Sunday, 3,592 of 4,848 requests for international protection were still pending, 326 had been rejected and 928 terminated because the asylum-seekers had left the country before a ruling. Hungary's right-wing government has stopped all migrant traffic through its territory with more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) of fence on its borders with Serbia and Croatia. European Union leader Donald Tusk says saving Europe's Schengen passport-free travel zone is going to be a "race against time" after Germany, Sweden, Slovenia and other EU nations have acted unilaterally. Hungary's prime minister says his country and others from Eastern Europe will send over 300 police and border guards to Greece to help "stop" the flow of migrants. Viktor Orban, attending a migration summit in Malta, told Hungarian state television that Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia — the other countries in the so-called Visegrad Group, or V4 — were also taking part in the initiative set up "in the interests of stopping the refugee wave at the southern borders of Greece." Slovenian police say more than 180,000 asylum seekers have entered the country since mid-October, with the influx continuing even as the nation starts putting up a razor-wire fence along the border. Croatia's foreign minister says she is hopeful Slovenia will move its razor-wire fence from a disputed zone on the border between the two neighboring countries. The leaders of Croatia and Slovenia will meet amid border tensions that erupted after Slovenia started building a razor-wire fence inside disputed territory to stem an influx of migrants. Tensions soared Wednesday as Croatia announced a formal protest note to Slovenia saying sections of the fence are on Croatian territory. Swedish police are urging people traveling to and from neighboring countries on Thursday to bring their passports or other identification documents as the country temporarily reintroduces border controls. The move announced by the government late Wednesday means that Sweden is suspending the European Union's passport-free travel rules, to control the flow of migrants entering the country from Denmark and Germany.
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