Hungary will not open its border to refugees and migrants facing bitterly cold conditions in neighbouring Serbia, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told a German newspaper.
Migrants who need assistance in Serbia should register an asylum claim and seek shelter there, Szijjarto told Saturday's edition of Die Welt.
"Many avoid that because they want to seek asylum in a different country," he said, insisting that "masses of people do not have the right to march through safe countries and pick where to live."
A member of fiercely anti-immigrant Prime Minister Viktor Orban's cabinet, Szijjarto said his country's position "not to allow illegal transit" of migrants has been clear from the start.
With the peak of the migration crisis in Europe in the summer of 2015, Orban emerged as the leader of a front in the EU which wanted to seal the borders against the surge of refugees and migrants streaming in from Turkey and across the Balkans.
Hungary became the first European country to fence off its border, with Serbia, in September 2015. By March last year, all countries on the Balkan route followed suit, closing their border, but the migrants still continued to arrive.
Since then, the people who arrived in Serbia but were unable to continue toward the EU has created a backlog of migrants with nowhere to go.
Around 1,200 to 2,000 remain stranded in Belgrade without proper shelter in the middle of winter, enduring temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius.
