Malta and Tunisia yesterday had talks at the Tunisian Justice Ministry aimed at concluding an extradition agreement, Justice and Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg said.

He also said that for the time being Malta was not in a position to accept an Italian proposal for the introduction of quotas for legal immigrants.

Dr Borg was addressing Maltese journalists at the end of the first summit of heads of state and government of five Western European and five North African countries, known as the 5+5 Dialogue in Tunis.

In their final declaration the leaders of France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Malta, and Morocco, Mauritania, Libya, Algeria and Tunisia, confirmed their interest in holding another summit and invited Foreign Ministers to ensure the follow-up of the summit recommendations.

Dr Borg yesterday morning took part in a summit working session with the leaders of the participating countries, representing the Prime Minister, Dr Eddie Fenech Adami, who after attending the opening session on Friday, yesterday flew to Nigeria for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

The closed session discussed the different issues treated in the final declaration.

Apart from terrorism, the meeting concentrated mostly on illegal immigration, with the North African countries contending that they too were victims.

French President Jacques Chirac said that in time there would be a billion Africans - of whom 700 million who would be under 20 years old - seeking work.

It was in this context that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi declared that during the European Council which will be meeting in Brussels on Friday and Saturday that he would be proposing that the European Union increase its financial assistance to North African countries so that their people would not need to find work in Europe, while those who travel to Europe would do so as legal migrants, Dr Borg said.

Dr Borg said he made two interventions, one of which on terrorism, when he stressed that all Mediterranean countries would sign and ratify the Palermo Convention against organised transnational crime. Malta ratified the convention last September. Signature would automatically bring an extradition treaty into effect.

Dr Borg's second intenvention was on illegal migration, in which he insisted that although it was combating such migration, Europe was not seeking to be a 'fortress' against immigration.

He said that in June the 15 EU member countries and the 10 new members agreed that immigrants who have been working regularly in Europe for five years would be given a residence permit.

Dr Borg said there was lack of agreement over readmission agreements for countries to accept back citizens who had left their country, with the North Africans insisting that given the situation in their countries it would be difficult to sign these agreements.

Dr Borg said the summit was important because the 10 countries had met to discuss issues affecting the region.

All the leaders present, except Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi, addressed the summit but, Dr Borg said, that did not mean that Libya did not have its own opinions; in fact Libya supported the final declaration.

President Gaddafi remained silent throughout the summit. When journalists asked him why, the Libyan leader referred to an Arabic proverb saying that "speech is silver, but silence is golden". "I chose gold", he added.

Dr Borg said the summit was an informal way for countries to speak out on what was worrying them. For example, the Algerian President pleaded for his country not to be rapped so harshly over democracy and human rights because Algeria was still developing. The more European countries helped Algeria, the more it could develop democracy.

Dr Borg said Mr Berlusconi's promise of an EU commitment to help North Africans financially would indirectly help Malta also because if fewer immigrants entered Europe fewer of them would end up in Malta.

Dr Borg said that the quota issue was not mentioned in the summit meetings but it was often brought up in various other fora particularly during during Council of Ministers' meetings.

Italy was promoting the proposal but some countries disagreed with it, because they insisted that quotas would not solve anything. Italy says that since quotas were introduced for Sri Lanka, illegal immigration from that country to Italy had stopped. The proposal did impose numbers.

Dr Borg said, when asked, that Malta could not accept quotas for the time being, but this could change in future.

He added that another 5+5 summit would be held next year and in the meantime, experts were expected to continue meeting over the issues discussed in Tunis, which apart from the fight against terrorism and illegal immigration also centred on stability and co-operation in various other areas.

In the Tunis Declaration, the 10 political leaders reiterated their willingness to further reinforce confidence-building measures in all fields and agreed on the importance of seeing the EU accompany its enlargement process by a parallel supportive effort towards countries of the southern bank of the Western Mediterranean.

They also reiterated their condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and of organised transnational crime, namely drug trafficking, arms dealing and money laundering and confirmed their commitment to "endeavouring together to fight against these plagues in view of the threats they represent to peace and stability in the region".

The declaration underlines that this fight against illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings required common action and co-operation.

The declaration also emphasised interest in the setting up of a Euro-Med Investment and Partnership Facility with a view of the creation of the Euro-Mediterranean Bank.

It called for the relaunch of the Middle East Peace Process and expressed support to the restoration of sovereignty of Iraq.