Italy's populist prime minister Giuseppe Conte on Tuesday summoned hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini, defence minister Elisabetta Trenta and foreign minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi for talks in Rome on the key issue of migration, sources said.
Conte will on Wednesday hold talks with Salvini ahead of the summit of European interior ministers taking place in Innsbruck on Thursday and Friday - the first under the Austrian EU presidency - at which migration is set to top the agenda.
Differences over migrant rescues emerged between the defence and interior ministries when Salvini on Sunday urged the closure of Italian ports to vessels engaged in international missions in the Mediterranean after an Irish navy ship took 106 rescued migrants to Messina at the weekend.
A defence ministry source said late on Sunday that Salvini's planned move to bar international rescue vessels from Italy's ports was "beyond the interior ministry's remit."
The Irish ship, the Samuel Beckett, was taking part in the EU's Operation Sofia anti-trafficking mission.
The Italian government wants to re-negotiate current rules of engagement for international naval missions requiring rescued migrants to be taken to the nearest port - usually an Italian one - as part of its moves to stem the migrant influx.
The government also wants to block the secondary movement to Italy of asylum-seekers from outher EU countries, to see a "meaningful" relocation of refugees elsewhere in the bloc and to create migrant 'hotspots' in North Africa to identify genuine refugees who are eligible for asylum in Europe, sources said on Monday after a meeting between Conte, Salvini, Tria and welfare and economic development minister Luigi Di Maio .
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