Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini is confident that Malta will sign a search and rescue agreement with Italy which has been on the table for the past 10 years.

This was, however, categorically denied by Foreign MInister Tonio Borg.

In an interview with today’s Corriere della Sera, he referred to the tragedy in the Mediterranean earlier this week, in which 75 migrants allegedly lost their life while crossing from Africa to Europe and said that Malta did not have the tools, such as enough ships and crews, to monitor such an extensive zone. Italy did and it had proved this.

He said that for the past 10 years Italy had been negotiating a search and rescue agreement with Malta but Malta resisted and the agreement was never signed. He was confident, however, that it would be before the end of the year.

He said that following the agreement with Italy, Libya managed to block departures to Europe, especially from the port of Zuara and he do not believe that they let the Eritreans leave deliberately.

Five Eritrean migrants landed in Lampedusa on Friday in a weak state and claimed that another 75 had died on the way.

The migrants had been assisted by the Armed Forces of Malta during their journey and the AFM said yesterday that they had been in apparent good health and in good spirits. Their boat was in a good condition with its motor running. They refused to board the AFM patrol boat, not wanting to be rescued but to continue in a north westerly direction.

The AFM informed their Italian counterparts about the presence of the dinghy early on Thursday, enabling the Guardia di Finanza to send out a rescue launch to pick them up when the dinghy was still 10 nautical miles from Lampedusa. The AFM patrol boat retained contact until the immigrants were taken over by the Italians.