Italy wants EU to distribute 135 rescued migrants in fresh showdown

Italy's government wants other European Union countriesto commit to taking in some 135 migrants rescued overnight before itallows their disembarkation on Italian shores. The migrants are currently on the Italian coastguard vesselGregoretti, according to the European Commission.They were first picked up on Thursday, some of them with the help ofan Italian fishing boat, the Adnkronos news agency said. Interior minister and deputy premier Matteo Salvini said Friday thathe "will not authorize any disembarkation until a concrete commitmentcomes from Europe to take in all the migrants aboard the ship." Salvini has often threatened to keep migrants at sea as a way ofpressuring EU partners to accept burden-sharing deals.Italy, along with Malta, Greece and Spain, has handled the lion'sshare of migrants arriving in the EU via the Mediterranean in recentyears - a state of affairs that these countries deem unacceptable.The commission confirmed Friday that it had received a request fromItaly to help facilitate the disembarkation of the rescued people.The EU executive will now make contact with member states,spokeswoman Natasha Bertraud told dpa."Let's see if words are followed by facts," Salvini wrote on Twitter,indicating that he is braced for another showdown.The issue of migrants rescued at sea has long been a cause offriction between EU capitals. Fresh efforts to find a long-termsolution to distributing rescued people throughout the bloc have cometo nothing in the past couple of weeks.The commission typically acts as a broker, sounding out which memberstates are willing to take in rescued migrants.Salvini usually denies disembarkation rights to charity vessels, butit is highly unusual for him to apply the same tactics to an Italianpolice unit. On Thursday, there was a shipwreck off the coast of Libya in whicharound 150 people are presumed to have died and 147 were rescued, UNRefugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesman Charlie Yaxley said on Twitter. "That would make this the largest shipwreck of 2019. This tragedy hasto now lead to action," Yaxley said, calling for more sea rescueboats in the Mediterranean.The accident "is a terrible reminder of the risks still faced bythose making this dangerous journey to Europe," the commission saidFriday in a joint statement from foreign policy chief FedericaMogherini and others.Also on Friday, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandisaid: "Restoring rescue at sea, an end to refugee and migrantdetention in Libya, increasing safe pathways out of Libya must happennow before it is too late for many more desperate people."A spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres added that someof the survivors rescued by the Libyan coastguard have reportedlybeen placed in the Tajoura migrant detention centre, which is closeto a military facility and was hit by an airstrike on July 2 thatresulted in more than 50 deaths. "Libya is not a safe country of asylum and that refugees must betreated with dignity and respect, and in accordance withinternational law," the spokesman said.Separately, a total of 67 migrants were rescued off Malta on Friday,the Armed Forces of Malta said, in the second Maltese rescue in twodays. According to Alarm Phone, a support group for migrants in distress,the migrants said they had spent more than 40 hours at sea and hadrun out of water.The rescue came a day after another 76 migrants landed on theMediterranean island.