The Italian government is keen to pursue cooperation with Libya in efforts to prevent illegal immigrants leaving its shores for Italy, the interior ministry said on Monday.
A statement dismissed calls that Italy should reconsider its policies on Libya following two shipwrecks off the southern island of Lampedusa this weekend in which scores of migrants drowned.
"The government's strategy is to strengthen - not cut off - negotiations with Libya over the immigration issue," it said.
Interior Minister Giuliano Amato announced recently that Italian, Maltese and Libyan officials would meet at the end of the month - most likely on August 29 - to discuss the immigration emergency. The statement confirmed that the meeting would indeed take place.
The talks are expected to focus on the possibility of agreeing on joint sea patrols run by Italy, Malta, Libya, Spain and Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
The statement was released after Italy's leading newspaper - Corriere della Sera - published a front-page editorial saying Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was holding Italy to ransom on the issue.
The editorial - by the paper's deputy editor and Islamic affairs expert Magdi Allam - said that Gaddafi was "cynically using the migrants (issue) as blackmail to influence Italian policies" on the 30-year-old question of reparations for its colonial rule of the country.
The daily suggested that Gaddafi had no intention of resolving the immigration problem unless the centre-left government agreed to build a 1,700-km-long east-west motorway across northern Libya as the price for definitively closing the ongoing question of reparations.
Corriere estimated the cost of the highway as 3.5 billion euros. Italy is a popular destination for would-be immigrants seeking a gateway into Europe and thousands leave from north African ports every year, heading for its southern shores. One of the main routes for would-be immigrants aiming to reach Europe is through the desert from central Africa, into Libya and up to ports on the northern coast. Here they pay organised crime groups to ferry them in creaking boats towards Italy.
Interior Undersecretary Marcella Lucidi, of the Democratic Left, sparked polemics recently by announcing an end to the policy of flying illegal immigrants who came from Libya straight back to that country.
She said this controversial policy, brought in by the previous centre-right government, would be discontinued because Tripoli was not a signatory of the Geneva Convention on Refugees. Transport Minister Alessandro Bianchi said during a visit to Lampedusa today that the government would not barter with Libya on the immigration issue.
"Libya's requests? There's absolutely no way we'll barter over desperate people forced to cross the sea on rickety vessels.
"We'll try to convince Libya that issues as dramatic as these cannot be at the centre of give-and-take negotiations". "There's not much to talk about. It's a matter of facing the humanitarian emergency as quickly and as best we can," said the minister".
Bianchi said he would talk to Justice Minister Clemente Mastella to discuss the drafting of an urgent decree with "special provisions" against groups dealing in human trafficking.
He also urged the European Union to act quickly on the problem of illegal immigration.
"We need coherent, strong, decisive action," said Bianchi.
He added that the government will approve special measures to deal with the humanitarian emergency in Lampedusa, where he said the situation was "dramatic". "We need to increase the number of patrols at sea if we want to radically improve the situation".
Bianchi's visit coincided with the arrival of more rickety vessels carrying would-be immigrants. Some 30 migrants aboard three vessels reached the coasts of Lampedusa and the island of Pantelleria between Sunday night and Monday morning.
Another vessel, carrying an estimated 100 migrants, was spotted off the coast of Lampedusa on Monday morning. An Italian fishing boat rescued 10 immigrants on Sunday after their boat, said to be carrying as many as 40 people, overturned some 70 km south of Lampedusa.
On Saturday, a boat carrying 120 migrants sank off Lampedusa. Rescue ships saved 70 people, recovering only ten bodies despite a massive air and sea rescue operation. A leading member of the Northern League party meanwhile blasted the government, saying that the arrivals had increased exponentially since the centre left took power in May.
Former reform minister Roberto Calderoli said the government should use force or repatriate the migrants, arguing that if it took a tough stance the migrants would be dissuaded from risking their lives aboard rickety vessels.
