Italy: France, Malta offer to take quarter of 450 migrants

ROME — France and Malta have agreed to take 50 migrants each out of 450 stranded at sea on two EU border agency vessels, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Saturday after pressing his European peers to keep their promise to share the burden.

Conte said that Malta and France had come forward in response to his request to all 27 other members of the European Union to share the burden of welcoming the migrants.

“It’s an important result,” Conte wrote on Facebook, along with a copy of the letter he wrote to top European Commission officials demanding that other European countries make good on their verbal pledges to help Italy deal with the influx.

The migrants, like thousands of others, had set sail from Libya in a single wooden vessel which was identified early on Friday while passing through waters under Malta’s jurisdiction.

But Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who has authority over the country’s ports, on Friday refused to let them dock in the latest demonstration of his no-go stance on accepting more migrants.

Silvini insisted instead that the two Frontex vessels be instructed to “head south, to Libya or Malta”.

“We need an act of justice, of respect and of courage to fight against these human traffickers and generate a European intervention,” he said in talks with Conte, according to reports carried by Italian news agencies.

Malta said it had fulfilled its obligations by monitoring the vessel to see if it needed help. Malta says the ship’s crew made clear they didn’t need help and were heading toward the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Italy insisted Malta should have opened its ports to the ship.

Early on Saturday, the migrants were taken off the boat and transferred onto a rescue vessel from the EU border patrol agency Frontex and a ship from the Italian border police.

The Maltese government said Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had agreed to participate in the migrant relocation initiative, similar to one involving the Lifeline ship of a German aid group several weeks ago. But he stressed that Malta at all times followed international law.

In just one month in office, Italy under the hard-line Salvini has upended years of Italian policy toward migrants by refusing them entry.

Italy in general feels that the EU has left it alone to handle the tens of thousands of migrants coming across the sea every year. Salvini is pressing the EU to step up and take in the migrants who land in Italy and is trying to help Libya prevent them from leaving.

Aid officials say migrants who are being returned to Libya are at risk of facing abuse, rape, beatings and slavery.

We need an act of justice, of respect and of courage ... to generate a European intervention.” Matteo Salvini,