Libya's United Nations backed government is organising a conference on illegal immigration "in the first half of September", deputy premier Ahmed Maitig said on Monday during a visit to Tripoli by Italy's anti-migrant interior minister Matteo Salvini.
"We have invited Italian and other European partners in the Mediterranean to a conference on illegal immigration," Maitig told reporters during a press conference with Salvini.
The conference would approach the vexed issue of irregular immigration "with a clear-cut Italian-Libyan vision," Maitig stated, without saying where the meeting would take place.
Even though migrant landings in Italy have fallen dramatically this year, the EU's priority should be stemming the influx of migrants into the bloc, according to the blueprint unveiled on Sunday by populist premier Giuseppe Conte at an informal migration summit on Sunday in Brussels.
Italy's 'European Multilevel Strategy for Migration' calls for the EU to share the burden of mass migration to Europe via Africa more fairly and rejects as "unfit for purpose" the so-called Dublin rule requiring migrants to register and apply for asylum in the first European country they reach.
Italy has also proposed migrant "protection centres" to be established in other EU countries to relieve the burden on Italy, which has received over 700,000 migrants since 2014 and recently turned away two charity migrant rescue boats from its shores.
