Italy's hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini was on Monday due to hold talks in Rome with populist premier Giuseppe Conte on the thorny issue of migration after a half-hour meeting with president Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale palace.
Differences over migrant rescues emerged between the interior ministry defence ministries on Sunday when Salvini called for the closure of Italian ports to vessels engaged in international missions in the Mediterranean after an Irish navy ship took 106 saved migrants to Messina at the weekend.
A defence ministry source said late on Sunday that Salvini's planned move was beyond the interior ministry's competence.
"Eunavformed is a European mission within the remit of the foreign and defence ministries", the sources said, referring to the European Union's anti-trafficking mission.
Salvini had tweeted that he would raise his proposal to bar all ships with rescued migrants on board from Italy's ports at a meeting of EU and justice and interior ministers in Innsbruck on Thursday - the first under held under the new Austrian EU presidency.
Italy's new populist coalition government has set a goal of zero migrant arrivals, and Salvini, who heads the far-right League party, has already banned boats operated by charities from entering Italian ports.
Migrant arrivals have plunged some 80 percent in Italy so far this year from the same period of 2017, according to the United Nations migration agency, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
