Balkan, EU leaders pledge to work together on migrant crisis

European leaders agreed to cooperate to manage migrants crossing the Balkans but offered no quick fix to a crisis that threatens to take more lives as winter sets in and to set Europe’s nations against one another. Meeting in Brussels as another woman and two children died at sea off Turkey, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met leaders of nine countries on the route from the Aegean to Germany taken this year by half a million people, defying EU borders and unfurling razor wire. After talks throughout Sunday evening that began with what officials described as a round of leaders “venting” at each other’s conduct, the 11 governments issued a pledge to work together, along with a 17-point action plan that includes United Nations-aided accommodation for 100,000 people, half of them in Greece.