Italy’s firebrand interior min in Libya for migrant crisis talks

Immigration ups Spain population

TRIPOLI, Libya, June 25, (Agencies): Italy’s firebrand interior minister vowed on Monday to do everything possible to help Libya stem the flow of migrants and develop itself commercially, saying Italy wants Europe to view its former colony as a “great opportunity” and not a problem.

Matteo Salvini made his first official visit abroad to Tripoli, Libya’s capital, to hammer home his commitment to ending the migration flows that have fueled anti-migrant sentiment across Europe and brought his xenophobic party to power.

Speaking at a press conference with Ahmed Maiteeg, the deputy prime minister of the UN-backed Libyan government, Salvini insisted that new proposals in the European Union to create asylum identification centers for would-be refugees must be located at Libya’s southern borders — not in Europe, as France initially proposed.

Salvini also vowed to help Libyan authorities assume control over Libyan territory, including its territorial waters, to prevent migrants from leaving.

Libya was plunged into chaos following the 2011 uprising that ousted and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi and is now split between rival governments — one, backed by the United Nations, based in Tripoli, and the other in the country’ east — each supported by an array of militias. Since then, it has been a frequently used as a route to Europe for migrants fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East.

Maiteeg announced that the Libyan coast guard had rescued some 1,000 migrants on Sunday, including dozens of women and children in several different rescues. All migrants were given humanitarian and medical aid, and were taken to a naval base in Tripoli and a refugee camp in the town of Khoms, he said.

Salvini praised the Libyans for the rescue and vowed to halt European aid groups that have been rescuing migrants. Italy is committed, he said, to “blocking the full-on invasion of those associations that would like to substitute the government and authorities and in fact help illegal migrant traffickers.”

Meanwhile, Libyan coastguards picked up 948 African migrants on inflatable boats in several operations and also recovered 10 bodies on Sunday, officials and a witness at a naval base said.

The operations brings the number, since last week, of mainly African migrants trying to head to Italy but brought back to Libya to almost 2,000.

The western coast of Libya is the main departure point for thousands of migrants fleeing wars and poverty and trying to reach Europe.

The number of crossings has dropped sharply since July 2017 when an armed group expelled human traffickers from a smuggling hub after an Italy-backed deal.

“The coastguards picked up illegal migrants in different groups. The first group is 97 on one inflatable boat and the second group is 361 migrants on

Salvini

two inflatable boats,” Naval forces spokesman Ayoub Qassem told Reuters.

“The second group was taken to Khums town,” Qassem said, adding that the two groups included 110 women and 70 children.

A witness watching the arrival of another coastguard ship at Tripoli’s Abu Sittah naval base said a third group included 490 migrants picked up off Qarabulli town. Among them were 75 women and 20 children.

In related news, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s long-time allies in Bavaria are on track for their worst ever performance in October elections, according to a poll on Monday, suggesting their harder line on immigration is failing to lure voters from the far right.

Only 40 percent of voters would back the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), down from 42 percent in February, a Forsa poll forecast — both startling numbers for a party that has dominated the region for half a century.

Support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party rose to 13 percent from 10 percent in February, making it the third largest party in Bavaria, according to the poll.

Disagreements over how to handle migrants in the European Union have widened rifts in the bloc, threatened its free-travel area and, in Germany, piled pressure on Merkel’s fragile coalition government.

Meanwhile, the mysterious British street artist Banksy appears to have taken aim at the French government’s crackdown on migrants in a series of new murals in Paris.

The world’s best known graffiti painter apparently “blitzed” the French capital over the last few days, leaving as many as six works on walls across the city. None of the works were signed —- as has been Banksy’s wont in recent years —- but experts told AFP that they look genuine.

The most political takes issue with France’s tough anti-migrant policy, with nearly 40 makeshift camps razed in Paris in the last three years and President Emmanuel Macron determined that the city does not become a magnet for refugees.

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Spain’s population rose for the second straight year in 2017, after having fallen between 2012 and 2015 in the midst of an economic downturn, as an increase in foreigners offset a fall in the number of Spaniards, official data showed on Monday.

The figures come as Europe grapples with a rising influx of migrants, mostly from north Africa and war-torn countries such as Syria, after Mediterranean arrivals spiked in 2015. Sixteen EU leaders met for emergency talks in Brussels on Sunday to find a “European solution” to the issue.

The population of Spain increased to 46.66 million to Jan. 1, 2018, a rise of 132,263 people than a year earlier, the highest since Jan. 1 2013, the National Statistics Institute reported.

Spain saw a net increase of migrants arriving in the country of 146,604 people, after the arrival of almost half a million people last year, the largest migrant influx in 10 years, the data showed.

The total number of deaths in Spain in 2017 outpaced the number of births at the fastest pace since records began in 1941, data showed last week as the number of births dropped 4.5 percent while the number of deaths rose 3.2 percent.