June 24, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 23,1424

ROME: Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Monday he supported the creation of transit camps in the Mediterranean for illegal immigrants, as a way of countering a rising tide of human traffic in Europe.

Frattini’s remarks came as a boat carrying around 150 clandestine migrants including women and children landed in the southern Italian island of Sicily, where boatloads of would-be immigrants have been arriving almost daily in recent weeks.

Almost 200 would-be immigrants, believed to have embarked in Libya, drowned last week between Tunisia and Sicily, throwing the spotlight on the problem of people trafficking across the Mediterranean as Italy prepares to take over the EU presidency next month.

Frattini said Italy proposes setting up a maritime control centre for the southeast Mediterranean in Cyprus and “a centre, the size of which has yet to be determined, to house clandestine migrants stopped at sea until they are sent back to their home countries.”

“Cyprus has said ‘yes’ to the plan, put forward by us with support from Britain. We want to do the same in Malta, in cooperation with both Britain and Spain,” Frattini told Il Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Frattini also suggested that Italy could reward countries who clamp down on illegal immigration, a problem which is chipping away at the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

“Italy could increase legal immigration quotas from countries who succeed in stopping clandestine immigrants from leaving their shores. It would be a sort of reward for good behaviour,” Frattini told the paper.

Frattini said Egypt had taken steps to curb the flow of illegal migrants through the Suez canal, but he singled out Tunisia and Libya as countries that needed to work harder.

In Italy the question of illegal immigration threatens to provoke a crisis within the ruling coalition just as the government prepares to take over the rotating European Union Presidency on July 1.

The Northern League, the most right-wing and xenophobic of parties in government, has threatened to quit if firm action is not taken immediately to stop illegal immigrants.

EU leaders agreed at a weekend summit to boost cooperation to crack down on illegal immigration, but failed to back to a controversial British plan to set up “protection zones” outside EU borders to stem the flow of asylum seekers.

Britain is keen to set up at least a pilot scheme for the plans, which have been criticized by human rights campaigners as “unlawful and unworkable”.

In Spain, police stopped a total of 143 people attempting to enter Spain via the Canary Islands on Sunday.

In Turkey, a major route for migrants seeking to cross illegally from Asia into Europe, authorities rounded up 244 clandestine immigrants in two separate operations on Monday.

A group of 185 Afghans was detained in the country’s east after crossing the mountainous border with Iran by foot, while 59 people — Afghans, Chinese, Indians, Iranians, Pakistanis and Palestinians — were detained in the country’s west as they sought to cross into neighbouring Greece.—AFP