The United Kingdom is "very interested" in the deal Italy signed this month with Albania to build two migrant processing centres there, foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Wednesday after talks with his UK counterpart David Cameron in Brussels.
During bilateral talks on the sidelines of a Nato ministerial meeting, Cameron expressed "great interest" in the migrant processing centres which Italy plans to fund in Albania, Tajani told reporters.
"We discussed our positions on the agreement with Albania and there was great interest and a positive assessment of it," Tajani said.
Tajani has invited Cameron to an annual gathering of ambassadors in Rome "to look at the transatlantic relationship and ties with a great nation that is one of our Nato allies and a former European Union member", he said.
The Italy-Albania deal "is completely different" from the UK government's contentious plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda, which was recently ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court, Tajani said.
"Our agreement is with an EU candidate country which is a member of Nato. It is completely different," Tajani said.
Migrant charities have however questioned the legality of the Italy-Albania accord under which Rome plans for the two processing centres to be fully operational by next Spring and to handle the asylum claims of up to 39,000 migrants rescued at sea each year.
Albanian police guards will be in charge of patrolling both centres, which will be administered by the Italian government.
One of the centres will be an expulsion and detention facility for failed asylum-seekers to built at Gjader, 20km away from the coast.
Women, children and other vulnerable migrants will not be brought to Albania but will continue to be disembarked in Italy under the accord.
