1ST LEAD Hungary to propose EU assistance to Greece for border controls By dpa correspondents

Budapest (dpa) - Hungary is set to curb the record inflow of migrants with tougher laws and possibly a military deployment at the border and also said Sunday that the European Union should send police to the Greek border. All EU nations should contribute to help Greece stop immigrants from making it to Europe, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.More than 150,000 people, mostly refugees from Syria, traversed the Balkans this year - from Turkey, across the Greek Aegean islands and mainland, Macedonia and Serbia - to arrive in Hungary, the gateway to the EU border-free Schengen zone."Greece is incapable of protecting its borders," Foreign Peter Szijjarto said, adding that Hungary is ready to send personnel to Greece to help it do so. Hungary‘s conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orban‘s cabinet has taken steps to curb the surge of migrants across its border. A fence along the 175-kilometre frontier with Serbia is nearly completed, and on Tuesday, a law imposing prison terms against border trespassers comes into effect.Anyone without proper documentation caught crossing the border will face up to three years in prison while anyone who cuts the border fence can get up to five.Also on Tuesday, Orban‘s cabinet might declare a crisis situation, paving the way for parliament to allow the army to join police in patrolling the border zone.Migrants have been streaming across the Hungarian border in recent weeks at a record pace. On Saturday, police registered 4,330 illegal crossings, setting a new high for a single day, after 3,601 on Thursday.Thousands more are streaming towards Hungary ahead of Tuesday‘s implantation of prison terms. About 6,000 asylum seekers set off Saturday from Kanjiza in northern Serbia for the nearby Hungarian border, church warden Robert Lacko said Sunday.He said he expected a larger number Sunday.On the other side of the border, in Roszke, the secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Elhadj As Sy, called the refugee crisis a "humanitarian catastrophe."Many of the asylum seekers are tired, some are sick and for many, "every minute" counts, he said, according to a report by the Hungarian news agency MTI.EU interior ministers are due to meet in crisis session in Brussels on Monday, with eastern members of the bloc, including Hungary, holding out against plans by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to impose quotas on member states.