Foreign Minister Tonio Borg has had talks on illegal immigration with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

The two ministers said in a joint statement afterwards that they had agreed to invite the Libyan Foreign Minister for talks in Rome next month.They described their talks as very positive and reiterated their commitment to put immigration on the EU agenda.

Dr Borg said Malta backed Italy’s policy to immediately repatriate migrants rescued in international waters. The two ministers congratulated Libya for having, in the past few weeks, collaborated for solutions to be found to this human tragedy.

Sig Frattini said Italy was supporting the proposal made by Malta for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to strengthen its office in Tripoli to consider any requests for humanitarian protection made by migrants.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.