Italy will host a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in European and its six Mediterranean partners in Palermo next week centred on migrants and refugees in the region, the foreign ministry said on Monday.
Italy's foreign minister Angelino Alfano, OSCE chairman Sebastian Kurz and secretary-general Thomas Greminger will open the two-day meeting taking place at Palermo's Palazzo dei Normanni on 24-25 October, the ministry stated.
Representatives from OSCE's 57 member states and from Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia will attend the conference, which will also review security issues relating to the "vast" influx of migrants across the Mediterranean, the ministry said.
Participants at the meeting will discuss ways of transforming the migrant emergency in the Mediterranean into an opportunity to renew regional and international cooperation, the ministry added.
"Italy will next year chair OSCE and the groundwork for this crucial mandate will be laid at this Mediterranean conference," Alfano stated.
"We did not randomly choose Palermo as a venue for such an international gathering. Sicily is the place where Arabs and Normans forged a unique artistic style that lives on in its Unesco World Heritage sites," Alfano said.
"It is also a fundamental model for social integration and religious tolerance among difference peoples," Alfano concluded.
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