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Tunisia's prime minister, in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejected criticism on Tuesday that his country had been slow to take back failed asylum seekers from Europe, including Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri.
Youssef Chahed also rejected the idea of Tunisia setting up its own asylum centers to ease the burden on Europe.
Shortcomings in the system were exposed in December by the failure to deport Tunisian Islamic State group supporter Amri, who was on a watch list and had been denied asylum six months before he killed 12 people by driving a truck through the market.
In an interview in Bild, Chahed said cooperation with Germany on asylum seekers was functioning well.
"The biggest problem for Europe is refugees who go from Libya to Italy," he said, adding that German authorities needed to provide the correct paperwork to be able to send back failed asylum seekers to Tunisia.
"Illegal immigrants who use false papers sometimes make things difficult and prolong the process," he said.
"Tunisia is a very young democracy, I don't think that it can function or that we have capacity to create refugee camps," he said.
Merkel has been weakened by her open-door migrant policy which allowed more than a million refugees into Germany in the last two years. She is now trying to show voters she is beefing up security and cracking down on illegal migrants before a national election due in September.
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