Roundup: Italy praises EU operation launch, urges more efforts in migrant crisis

Italy on Monday praised the launch of a European Union (EU) naval operation against human traffickers in the Mediterranean called EUNAVFOR Med, but urged more efforts in tackling the migrant crisis.

Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti defined a "success" the launch of EUNAVFOR Med, which is to identify, capture and seize vessels used or suspected of being used by migrant smugglers or traffickers. The mission will initially last 12 months and will be conducted in sequential phases.

"Today we record a success in Italy... The issue of security in the Mediterranean, a burden that so far Italy had been bearing alone, is now shared," Pinotti said at a conference in Genoa, a city in northern Italy.

However, she stressed, Italian citizens "do not feel there is enough solidarity" across Europe yet. "Some steps are being made but they are insufficient, because the Mediterranean cannot be a border for those who often flee from wars and the risk of death," Pinotti said.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who participated in a recent meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg, said in a statement released on Monday it was important for Italy that the EUNAVFOR Med mission be under Italian command.

Gentiloni said the mission was "a first step and a small part of the European initiative." He underscored it was fundamental that a more general accord emerge from the Thursday-Friday EU summit on the relocation of migrants who have a right to international protection.

At that summit, Gentiloni added, "it will be necessary to achieve an accord that puts the binding commitment to solidarity on the relocation of migrants in writing, because solidarity cannot be an option, but must be a EU commitment."

"I think that the negotiations of recent weeks have created the grounds for an accord, but we will see: we are going to have to work on it over the next few days," Gentiloni said in the statement.

Local media said a draft EU accord expected to be approved at the upcoming EU summit would relocate among members states 40,000 refugees presently in Italy and Greece who are "clearly in need of international protection" by the end of July.

Growing flows of migrants fleeing North African poverty-stricken nations into southern Italy via the Mediterranean has reached alarming proportions in recent months. More than 60,000 migrants have landed in Italy so far since the beginning of 2015, according to official estimates.

On Monday, some migrants told Italian police that men on a Libyan guard ship fired on a migrant boat, killing one man and injuring another, who was transported to the Italian southern island of Lampedusa. Italian police were investigating on the accounts. Libyan coast guard sources quoted by ANSA denied that they opened fire against the migrants.

Over the past days the migrant crisis has also caused tension between Italy and France, after France refused the entry of migrants from the northern border close to the Italian town of Ventimiglia. Around 100 migrants camped on seaside rocks in protest against the denial.

According to the EU's Dublin Regulation, the country where an asylum seeker arrives is responsible for processing the claim. Enditem