Conflict-wracked Africa needs a strategic plan to tackle the current migration crisis, Italy's centre-left prime minister Matteo Renzi told journalists in New York on Monday.
"In our view a plan for Africa is the solution. The problem...cannot be solved day to day, we need to be far-sighted and to have a strategy," said Renzi.
"If Europe doesn't listen to us, we will take the necessary decisions. Italy is capable of going it alone [on immigration]," he said.
Renzi repeated his disappointment at Friday's EU summit in Bratislava, which he said on Saturday had not raised the issue of Africa, from whose shores hundreds of thousands of migrants are heading Europe annually across the Mediterranean.
Italy has been pushing for international agreements with African states to help close migrant routes to Europe and take back some of those arriving via Libya, in exchange for greater aid and investment but the Bratislava summit "didn't even mention Africa,", Renzi said.
Italy, which has been at the frontline of the migrant crisis – has been largely left to handle the influx alone and the solutions it has proposed have not been taken into account, according to Renzi.
He is in New York to take part in the United Nations General Assembly and a summit on the crisis that is driving millions of refugees to Europe from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
