GERMAN government officials will reject an opposition leader’s call for the country to unilaterally take in refugee children stuck in overcrowded camps on the Greek islands, it was revealed today.

Green Party co-leader Robert Habeck told a national newspaper on Sunday that “it is a humanitarian imperative to help quickly” and get some 4,000 children out of the camps.

Asked whether Germany should go ahead even if other European countries don’t also take in refugees, he replied: “Yes. In any case, everyone will never join in.”

But government officials made it clear yesterday that they don’t want to let other European countries off the hook. Many have refused to take in desperate people fleeing war or poverty in their homeland.

Government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said that Germany wants to help improve the living conditions of refugee children, but that it is “seeking a European solution for the future and Germany can’t do that unilaterally.”

Development Aid Minister Gerd Mueller added: “The children can and must best be helped on the spot.”

Those who arrive on Greek islands from the nearby Turkish coast are held in camps, which have been criticised for their poor conditions, pending deportation unless they are granted asylum in Greece.

This is in line with a 2016 deal between the European Union and Turkey to stop the migrant flow into western Europe.

The agreement, along with an increase in refugee arrivals, has led to deteriorating conditions in overcrowded camps on the eastern Aegean islands.

Greece’s six-month-old conservative government has vowed to move about 20,000 people off the islands and into other migrant and refugee facilities on the mainland in the next few months.

Meanwhile, six refugees, including two children, were presumed dead yesterday after a boat in which they were trying to cross from Serbia into Croatia, an EU member state, capsized and sunk in the River Danube.

Some people managed to swim to the Serbian bank, but the bodies of those who drowned could not immediately be found.

Nine refugees from a second boat were taken to a police station for questioning.