Immigrants held at sea as Italy seeks EU assistance

ROME — Another day’s worth of food was sent Sunday to a pair of military ships off Sicily as Italy waited for more European nations to pledge to take a share of the hundreds of migrants on board before allowing the asylum-seekers to step onto Italian soil.

Germany, Spain and Portugal each agreed to accept 50 of the migrants, following similar offers by fellow European Union members France and Malta on Saturday. The prime minister of the Czech Republic rebuffed the appeal, calling the distribution plan a “road to hell.”

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has vowed to prohibit further disembarking in Italy of migrants who were rescued while crossing the Mediterranean Sea unless the burden is shared by other EU countries.

Salvini, who leads the right-wing League party in Italy’s populist coalition government, said Sunday the “aim was for brotherly re-distribution” of the 450 rescued passengers on the two military ships.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte contacted fellow EU nation leaders Saturday, asking them to take some of the rescued migrants. But Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis tweeted that his country “won’t take any migrants,” dismissing Italy’s approach as a “road to hell” that would encourage more migrant smuggling.

While campaigning for Italy’s March election, Salvini praised the hardline stance on immigration taken by several eastern European countries, among them the Czech Republic.

Italy’s Conte insisted the “solidarity” strategy was working, citing the offers from France, Malta and Germany.

“This is the solidarity and responsibility that we have always sought from Europe,” the premier said on Facebook. He added that Italy would “continue on this path, with firmness and in respect of human rights.”

More than 600,000 migrants were rescued in the central Mediterranean and brought to Italian territory in the past few years. Many were economic migrants ineligible for asylum. Since their home countries often don’t facilitate repatriation, Italy has been left to shelter many of them, although thousands have slipped out of Italy to seek work or relatives in northern Europe.

Finding takers for all of the asylum-seekers on the military ships waiting off Sicily, in the grips of a heat wave, could be a long process. Baby food, milk and juice were among the provisions being delivered Sunday.

A fishing boat, launched Friday from Libya by human traffickers and crowded with some 450 migrants, sailed to tiny Linosa island off Sicily. Off Linosa, a vessel for European border agency Frontex and an Italian border police boat took aboard the migrants.