Italy is to report Malta to the European Union after being forced to rescue seaborne migrants its eastern island neighbour refused.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said Monday he was drawing up a dossier on the affair which would show ''clearly'' it should have been Malta's duty to rescue the 140 Africans found drifting in its waters Thursday.
After a four-day stand-off in which the European Commission sided with Italy, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi gave the go-ahead to pick up the ailing migrants from a Turkish freighter, the Pinar, that rescued them.
Some 20 of the weakest including two pregnant women were rushed to the southern Italian island of Lampedusa Sunday night and the rest came off two Italian Navy ships at Porto Empedocle near Agrigento in Sicily Monday morning.
Some of the migrants said they had only drunk sea water for the last two days.
When they have disembarked and been cared for the migrants will be taken to a migrant centre in central Sicily.
Malta said it, too, would present its case to the EC, admitting that the Pinar had actually been in Maltese waters but international law dictated it should head for the nearest port which was allegedly Lampedusa.
The Italian ambassador in Malta, Paolo Trabalza, will have talks Monday afternoon with Maltese Foreign Minister Tonio Borg who said Monday morning the matter had been a ''misunderstanding between friends''.
