Berlusconi to visit overwhelmed isle of Lampedusa

[March 30, 2011]  LAMPEDUSA, Italy (AP) -- Premier Silvio Berlusconi is visiting the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa on Wednesday as ships arrived to remove some of the thousands of North African migrants who have overwhelmed it.

A Navy ship and a commercial ferry arrived in the morning, and at least three more are expected throughout the day, said Cosimo Alessandro Nicastro, commander of the Italian Coast Guard. The ships will move some of the migrants to temporary shelters elsewhere in Italy.

Berlusconi is expected at midday for his first visit to the island since the migrant crisis broke in January amid unrest across North Africa. The premier toured a refugee center in another Sicilian town last month.

About 18,000 migrants, mostly Tunisians, have arrived in Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than to mainland Italy, since mid-January. Many have been transferred to other centers in Italy, but about 6,000 remain on the island.

With the local immigrant center overwhelmed, migrants have taken to sleeping in makeshift tent camps or in fields outdoors. Newspaper reports said Wednesday that about a third of them have been left without food as authorities on the island only have enough to feed 4,000.

Tensions are so high that many of the island's 5,000 residents staged protests Monday at the harbor and on the docks.

Within the government, too, the crisis is creating some tension, with the anti-immigrant Northern League party pushing for quick repatriations. The opposition, meanwhile, accuses the government of poor handling of the migrant emergency.

Berlusconi met with Cabinet officials late Tuesday to review the crisis.

Italy has asked fellow European nations to share the burden and take in some of the migrants. So far, the EU border agency has sent a team in to help, but Italy is insisting on far more tangible support from individual nations.

Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the migrant issue was raised at a meeting in London on Tuesday after talks on the Libya crisis. Frattini said that, according to a decade-old EU directive, "when there's an abnormal, sudden flow of homeless ... the EU must adopt measures for temporary protection that include the distribution of the homeless."

"This is the time to do it," he said.

[Associated Press]

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.