Nautilus III starts today

Nautilus III, the EU-led patrol mission against illegal migration in the Mediterranean, is set to start today, sources close to the Maltese Armed Forces told The Times yesterday. "All is now set so that this year's mission can start on Saturday (this morning) as scheduled by Frontex following an agreement reached between all the participating EU member states last week in Poland," the sources said.

This year's mission, coordinated and financed by the EU border control agency, will be the third surveillance operation to be held off the coast of Malta against illegal migration.

Nautilus III will, however, be by far the longest such mission and is scheduled to last 23 weeks, covering the entire migration season from May to October without any interruption.

This was possible following the doubling of the agency's budget for this year, through the initiative of Maltese MEP Simon Busuttil who is also the European People's Party spokesman on Frontex at the European Parliament.

Malta, Italy, France and Germany will be the main EU member states participating in this mission contributing various naval and aeronautic assets to cover the region, particularly the strait between southern Italy, Malta and Libya.

Other EU member states will be participating through the deployment of experts to assist Malta and Italy deal with illegal immigrants landing in Malta, Lampedusa and Sicily.

The start of this year's mission had to be postponed by almost a month following an initial disagreement between the main participating countries over who should take final responsibility of illegal immigrants saved in the search and rescue area (SAR) of Libya during the patrol mission. A deal was struck last week following diplomatic and technical discussions.

In line with this agreement, migrants saved in the Libyan SAR will be taken to Libya and when not possible to the closest safe haven. According to maritime rules, the closest save haven will mean either Malta or Lampedusa, depending on which island is the closest when illegal immigrants are taken on board.

The sources said that according to last year's agreement, when Libya refuses to take illegal immigrants, as will probably be the case even this year, both Germany and France had accepted to assume responsibility of the illegal immigrants saved by their assets.

Despite diplomatic efforts by the EU and its member states over the past months, Libya has again refused to participate in the Frontex-led mission.

It is a known fact that the majority of illegal immigrants crossing over to Europe from North Africa leave on boats from various Libyan ports.