Europe's human rights body, the Council of Europe rapped the European Union on Monday for its apparent indifference to Italy's new policy of turning back illegal immigrants intercepted in the Mediterranean.
In turning back the boat people, ''Italy has so far acted amidst the deafening silence of the European Union which should instead be more responsible and vigilant in helping countries which bear the brunt of the immigration wave,'' the Council's Human Rights Commissioner Thomas Hammarberg told ANSA.
''The international community must back the Vatican and the United Nations in putting a stop to Italy's unilateral initiatives,'' he said, stressing that ''repatriation is not a solution''.
Hammerberg, however, stressed that it was necessary that Europe give Italy a hand in facing the immigration emergency.
The Vatican weighed into the controversy last week, with Msgr Agostino Marchetto, head of the Pontifical Council for Migrants, saying that Italy had broken international laws on refugee rights.
''International law..lays down that (all) possible asylum seekers...be considered 'presumed refugees','' he said.
The United Nations' High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said last week that deporting migrants while still at sea was against international law.
In Brussels, a group of MEPs, including the coordinator of the European Socialist party Claudio Fava, urged the Chairman of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee Gerard Deprez to convene an urgent meeting on Italy's new immigration policies.
The MEPs asked Deprez to carry out a review of a recent Italo-Libyan accord which allows Italy to escort the boat people to Libya and whose ''content is still largely secret''.
''We're convinced that the actions of Italian authorities, already disapproved of by the European Court and the European Parliament in 2005, violate the rights of those seeking asylum,'' the MEPs said.
Under terms of last year's friendship and cooperation accord which resolves issues related to Italy's colonial occupation of the North African country, Italy will pay Libya $200 million over 25 years to fund various projects including the Italian construction of a coastal highway linking it with Egypt and Tunisia.
Rome will also clear Libya of landmines left from the colonial period.
As well as deportation at sea the deal also envisages joint patrols of Libya's shores, set to get underway soon.
Amnesty International, meanwhile, reiterated calls to Italy to ''fall in line with international law on human rights'', including the 1951 Geneva Convention.
It said that the hundreds of people sent back to Libya ''face an uncertain fate and the little information available on their identity, age and health condition step up concern''.
But Giacomo Santini, an MP with Premier Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL) party, said that the rest of Europe was ''deaf to Italy's appeal for help in contributing to the immigration emergency''.
Italy is waiting for ''a serious contribution and adequate financing'' to deal with the problem, he said.
FRATTINI'S APPEAL FOR GUIDELINE PLAN.
Two weeks ago, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini urged EU colleagues at a meeting in Luxembourg to draw up a guideline plan to deal with the emergency in the Mediterranean.
Frattini said the European Commission should draw up the measures before its five-year mandate expires this year.
Other EU countries bordering the Mediterranean - Malta, Greece, Spain, Portugal and France - support a seven-point plan outlined by Italy, he said.
If adopted, these measures must become binding for other EU members because southern European countries can no longer be left alone to bear the brunt of the emergency, added Frattini.
The plan would outline clear-cut rules to help immigrants stranded at sea, avoiding disputes between countries over whose responsibility it is to assist them.
It would also propose shared responsibility among the 27-member states for providing hospitality for the migrants; set up a pan-European network of holding centres; provide concrete incentives to non-EU countries promoting legal immigration; agree to joint sea and coast patrols with non-EU countries in a bid to stem illegal immigration; and work with Libya to organise radar and satellite systems to monitor its southern frontiers.
With almost 800 kilometres of coastline, Libya has become a key stepping-stone for African migrants seeking to enter Europe, most of them through Malta, Sicily and the southern Sicilian island of Lampedusa.
Italy is ready to finance 50% of the cost of these monitoring systems but believes the EU should do its bit in covering the rest, Frattini said.
