Senegal, Bissau stop migrants

Police in Senegal and neighbouring Guinea - Bissau have in the last few days detained more than 150 illegal migrants who were trying to leave by boat for Spain's Canary Islands, officials said.

Departures from West Africa's Atlantic Coast of migrants seeking a new life in Europe are picking up again as trade winds ease and sea conditions become calmer, making it easier for the open wooden fishing boats to attempt the dangerous voyage.

Emergency services in the Canaries - seen as the door to Europe by many Africans - said on Tuesday boats carrying 194 Africans had arrived since late Monday. More than 30,000 African migrants came ashore on the Spanish islands last year.

Government officials in Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony on Senegal's southern border, said police on Tuesday completed a roundup of 63 would-be migrants, most of them Senegalese, as they prepared to depart from the Bijagos Islands.

A police spokesman in Senegal's southern Casamance region said a boat carrying 98 people, from Guinea-Bissau, Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Senegal, was intercepted on Monday. Two outboard motors and supplies of fuel were also seized.

"That's our fifth seizure of a boat since the start of June," police Capt. Cheikh Sarr said, adding that 350 would-be migrants were intercepted in Casamance in that period.

Spain, aided by some EU partners such as Portugal and Italy, has sent planes and ships to patrol the West African coast. But this limited deployment has struggled to contain the exodus of young Africans fleeing their continent's poverty and searching for a better life in Europe.

As the pressure of illegal migrants causes a sensitive political problem at home, Spain has launched a diplomatic offensive in West Africa offering increased aid and more legal jobs in exchange for cooperation to help stem the migrant tide.

Madrid has also been repatriating hundreds of migrants.

Spain's ministers of the interior and labour and social affairs, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba and Jesus Caldera, are travelling to Senegal tomorrow with a delegation of Spanish businessmen to discuss more job opportunities for Africans.

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who has faced criticism at home for the forced repatriation of Senegalese illegal migrants from Spain, has called on European countries to shift from aid to making more investments in Africa to create jobs.