Italy will ask NATO ships to stop boats carrying migrants from North Africa to Italy.
"I think you can intervene immediately by asking NATO vessels already along the Libyan coast to block goods from entering, to also be used to block people from leaving," Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni told reporters on Friday at a security conference in the northern Italian city of Varese.
"This can be done right away if NATO decides to agrees. It would be a solution to the problem.
Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi needs votes from Maroni's anti-immigrant Northern League party to keep his government from falling. The Northern League has threatened to end its governing alliance if Italy doesn't pull its support for bombing the North African country.
Unrest in many Arab countries this year has caused the main flow of illegal immigrants seeking to enter the European Union to switch from Greece to Italy's islands, the EU's border protection agency Frontex said Tuesday.
Most migrants arrive in Italy by landing on the small island of Lampedusa, which is closer to Tunisia than the Italian mainland. In excess of 41,000 migrants have reached Lampedusa this year.
Italy on Friday was due to sign an accord with Libyan rebel leaders aiming to keep migrant boats from leaving for Italy. An agreement to jointly patrol coastal waters with Libya was scrapped in March when Italy joined Nato in its mission to defend civilians against Muammar Gaddafi.
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#1
Catch-22, namely will ITALIA = econ-troubled NATO-EU accept econ-aiding $$$, other assistance from oil-rich Muslim Nations to care for the Migrants + allow them to stay instead of returning home, all the while knowing they may be allowing subversive, pro-violence Jihadi = MilTerr elements to take root LEGALLY? inside their country(s)???
* TOPIX > EASTERN EUROPE THE NEW FRONT FOR JIHAD?, as led by EU financial/banking crisis + "Jasmine" Muslim migrations.
I'd like to see the USDOD + NATO aim their GMD-TMD interceptor missles downward towards NATO-EU Cities, towns, + farms instead of upwards into the skies towards Mama Russia.
D *** NG IT, ITS ALWAYS THE LATERAL = HORIZONTAL ONES THAT GET YA!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.