PARIS (Reuters) - Malta appears ready to allow the rescue ship Lifeline, stuck in international waters in the Mediterranean sea with more than 230 migrants aboard, to enter one of its ports after Italy refused, a French government spokesman said on Tuesday.

In Valletta, sources close to the Maltese government told Reuters a final decision was still pending.

“No final decision has been made yet but if the ship comes in, the understanding is that the migrants will be shared among EU countries,” one of the sources said.

A solution was broached in discussions on Monday between French President Emmanuel Macron and Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said.

“A European solution may be to have the ship dock in Malta. It is the solution that seems to be shaping up at the moment,” Griveaux told RTL radio, without elaborating.

“France would then be ready to send a team there to study individual (asylum) requests,” he said.

The Lifeline is the second rescue ship in weeks to expose Europe’s deep divisions over how to share refugees and economic migrants.

Leaders of the European Union failed on Sunday to come up with a joint position to tackle migration and will try again at a summit at the end of this week.

Earlier this month, a ship carrying more than 600 migrants, the Aquarius, was stranded before it was accepted by Spain.</s>PARIS: Malta appears ready to allow the rescue ship Lifeline, stuck in international waters in the Mediterranean sea with more than 230 migrants aboard, to enter one of its ports after Italy refused, a French government spokesman said on Tuesday (Jun 26).

The solution was broached in discussions on Monday between French President Emmanuel Macron and Malta's Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said.

"A European solution may be to have the ship dock in Malta. It is the solution that seems to be shaping up at the moment," Griveaux told RTL radio without elaborating.

"France would then be ready to send a team there to study individual (asylum) requests," he said.

The Lifeline is the second rescue ship in weeks to expose Europe's deep divisions over how to share refugees and economic migrants.

Leaders of the European Union failed on Sunday to come up with a joint position to tackle migration and will try again at a summit at the end of this week.

Earlier this month, a ship carrying more than 600 migrants, the Aquarius, was stranded similarly before it was accepted by Spain.</s>An aid ship stuck at sea for six days will be allowed to dock in Malta, and more than 200 migrants on board will be distributed among eight European Union states.

The announcement by Malta’s prime minister Joseph Muscat ends Europe’s second impasse in recent weeks over the fate of people saved at sea amid rising political resistance to their welcome.

Mr Muscat said that once in port, the Lifeline Mission ship would be impounded and the crew placed under investigation for allegedly operating illegally – including violating rescue protocols and operating without the correct registration.

The migrants, who were rescued off Libya’s coast, would be vetted to determine if they are eligible for political asylum or if they are economic migrants to be sent back to their countries of origin.

Mr Muscat said Malta has no legal obligation to act since the rescue happened in Libyan waters, but said it was willing to act “before the situation escalates to a humanitarian crisis”.

The eight countries to accept vetted migrants from the ship are France, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Malta itself. It is unclear how many each would take.</s>ROME—Matteo Salvini is a man on a mission that will either make the European Union work together on the migrant issue or drive it further apart. His now well known hardline policy on migration, which surely would make Donald Trump proud, will be tested this week when European leaders meet to discuss the burgeoning migration crisis. Salvini didn’t cause it, but he single-handedly forced it onto the top of the European Union’s agenda by imposing what amounts to a naval blockade to stop African migrants from entering Italy. By preventing all foreign-flagged rescue ships from delivering their human cargo to Italian shores, he has made African migration Europe’s problem at last.

What’s most astonishing about what is happening thanks to Salvini’s zero tolerance approach to migration control is that it has never happened before. Italy has grudgingly taken in more than 600,000 boat migrants who crossed the seas from North Africa in the last five years. About half of those were brought in by foreign flagged charity boats run by French, Spanish, Dutch and German NGOs that began their missions after Italy’s Mare Nostrum search and rescue program ended in 2013, in part because European leaders thought it created a pull factor for people smugglers. Now, Salvini has blocked the ports to all foreign-flagged charity ships, sending a strong signal that Italy will no longer be the staging area for the eurozone’s migration crisis.

The NGOs initially were there to fill the vacuum created by the lack of a coherent European migration policy, but they, too, have lost their original plot. The major organizations started their missions to simply provide “safe passage” across the sea, but they are now active players in what has turned into a fierce debate about safe ports and Libyan politics.

“In the beginning NGOs always talked about being a temporary emergency measure to push the E.U. to intervene,” a former search and rescue coordinator on one of the NGO charity ships told The Daily Beast. “Now we seem to have got distracted by the conditions in Libya. That was not the reason NGOs started doing rescues.”

That seeming loss of focus has given far-right leaders like Italy’s Salvini and Austria’s Sebastian Kurz cause to try to stop the ships by cutting funds to the NGOs and making their work akin to abetting illegal immigration.

Twice in the last year before Salvini even came into power, Italy sequestered charity boats for not cooperating with Libyan authorities in search and rescue operations. The German NGO Jugend Rettet’s boat Iuventa is still tied up on the Italian island of Lampedusa. The Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms similarly saw their ship seized for a month this spring. It is back at sea but has not cooperated in any rescues since Salvini closed the ports. Salvini has promised an end to all NGO “interference” in European policies, and in a series of Facebook rants blamed billionaire George Soros for funding the NGO ships and secretly plotting to “turn Europe Muslim,” an echo of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has made hating Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew, a trademark issue. Earlier this month, Salvini denied the Aquarius rescue ship, run by Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranée, the right to dock. Instead, he sent Italian military assets to accompany the Gibraltar-flagged ship to Spain.

This week, the stakes grew even higher. German NGO Mission Lifeline’s main flagship, also called Lifeline, spent six long days at sea with 234 African migrants on board after Italy and Malta both refused them a safe port to dock. Unlike the Aquarius, the Lifeline crew stands accused of gross negligence at sea for not allowing Libyan Coast Guard officials to intervene to save the migrants. Lifeline officials said that Libya was not a safe port, and that it was their duty to bring those trying to cross straight into Europe instead. While there is no question that Libya is not a safe place for migrants, there are many questions about whether NGOs should act unilaterally on such matters.

Unlike the Lifeline, the crew of the Aquarius had rescued its migrants under the direction of Italy’s maritime central command in Rome known as MRCC, which assigns case numbers to all migrant rescue cases and designates the rescue to the nearest ship in the area. The fact that Italy had given the Aquarius permission to rescue the migrants won sympathy when Italy then denied them permission to dock. That’s not the case with the Lifeline. According to Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, the Lifeline captain ignored instructions set forth by MRCC that the migrant rescues would be coordinated by the Libyan Coast Guard, and instead picked up the migrants before the Libyans arrived. French President Emmanuel Macron said the Lifeline had broken "all the rules and played into the hands of smugglers.”

On Wednesday, on the eve of the European summit, the Lifeline was finally granted permission to dock in Malta after Salvini and Maltese President Joseph Muscat struck a deal with Belgium, Holland, Ireland, Luxembourg, France and Portugal to each take a quota of the Lifeline’s migrants in a shared responsibility approach that Italy has been fighting for against European resistance for years.

Now the Lifeline boat will be sequestered in Malta and its crew investigated for illegal actions including defying competent authorities at sea by not allowing Libya to intercept the migrants. Muscat’s office issued a statement promising a thorough investigation into the charity’s actions. Lifeline’s second search and rescue boat, the Seafuchs, could also be seized.

What’s not being discussed is the often forgotten fact that migration into Italy is actually at a five-year low, down more than 85 percent from arrivals last year at this time, according to the International Organization for Migration.

The charity boat drama has provided a somewhat awkward backdrop ahead of the E.U. meeting Thursday and Friday. Leaders of countries where the charities are based or where their ships’ flags are from will have a hard time justifying why Italy should bear the brunt of the crisis simply by accident of geography.

Italian Prime Minister Conte says he will use the rescue boat drama to try to renegotiate the terms of the so-called Dublin Act, which states that migrants must apply for asylum wherever they first make landfall. Italy wants to scrap that rule and force European countries to take migrant quotas based on population and wealth, no matter where they land first. And he has managed to put that into practice unofficially by forcing the Lifeline to Malta and the Aquarius to Spain.

On Wednesday, Salvini donated a dozen patrol boats with search and rescue capabilities to the Libyan Coast Guard so that they can now fill the vacuum created by the absence of NGO charities. Italy will also call for Europe to set up migration centers on the external borders of Libya where migrants can apply for asylum in Europe, and then be given safe passage if they qualify.

“On Thursday in Brussels, we will jointly support with Libyan authorities the setting up of reception and identification centers south of Libya, on the external border of Libya, to help Libya as well as Italy block migration,” Salvini said on a visit to Tripoli earlier this week. “Neither Italy or Libya can be alone in protecting their borders.”

What remains to be seen is how European leaders will respond. Germany has called for a stronger presence by Frontex, Europe’s border patrol arm. France has called for a strengthening of Libya’s border with Niger. Spain’s new socialist government has called for a more humane approach. Hungary and Austria have instead called for a strengthening of borders within Europe and are not prepared to entertain any changes to the Dublin Act regulations. Italy, however, is the country calling the shots right now, and finally, it seems, Europe will have no choice but to listen.</s>A German NGO rescue vessel that has spent six days stuck at sea after no nearby European country would give it permission to dock has been granted permission to disembark in Malta after a group of European Union member states agreed to take in the roughly 230 passengers, the Maltese prime minister said Wednesday.

The Lifeline had been refused entry by the governments of Italy and Malta, and its predominately Sub-Saharan passengers, who were rescued from flimsy boats trying to make their way across the Mediterranean Sea, were stuck on board amid worsening weather conditions that prompted the NGO to request permission to enter Maltese waters to take shelter.</s>A humanitarian ship that has had some 130 rescued migrants on board for almost a week will enter a Maltese port on Wednesday, ending a standoff with Italy which refused to let the ship dock.

CASTILLE, Malta: A humanitarian ship that has had some 130 rescued migrants on board for almost a week will enter a Maltese port on Wednesday, ending a standoff with Italy which refused to let the ship dock.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told reporters seven European Union countries offered to share the burden of the migrants with Malta. The Lifeline ship, operated by German charity Mission Lifeline, is due to dock at around 1600 GMT.

"Lifeline will be granted permission to enter a Maltese port, where procedures for identification, ascertaining their asylum eligibility, and distribution to other member states will start immediately," Muscat said.</s>VALLETTA, Malta — The Latest on the influx of migrants in Europe (all times local):

Poland’s prime minister says he’s pleased that other European countries are coming around to Polish calls to better defend the EU’s external borders against migrants.

At an EU summit Thursday, Mateusz Morawiecki also said Poland would stick to its refusal to accept refugees as part of a migrant relocation program.

He told reporters: “I am glad that the European discussion is slowly moving in the direction in which we have always emphasized that it should be, namely more actions on the external borders of the EU.”

He also reiterated his belief that more should be done to keep people from leaving their homes in the first place.

Morocco’s director of migration and border surveillance says that his country is experiencing new pressures by migrants trying to get to Europe with the growing clampdown on the Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy.

Khalid Zerouali said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that Morocco isn’t interested in hosting a station for migrants to determine who is eligible for asylum in Europe. The plan to set up screening stations in some African countries is being discussed at Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels as one way to tamp down numbers of arriving migrants.

Zerouali said “that’s not the solution.”

Migrants use the North African kingdom of Morocco as a jump-off point to Spain. The border chief said that so far this year some 25,000 migrants have been stopped.

An Italian artist in the traditionally right-wing, League-voting region of Veneto has used a tractor to create art on his fields that echo the government’s hard-line position on migrants, as an EU summit meets on the issue.

Dario Gambarin inscribed his fields near Verona with the words “Defend Europe” as European leaders gather Thursday in Brussels. He put a peace sign for the “o” and included the image of a boat on waves.

Gambarin says he backed Italy’s position of doing away with the Dublin accords, which require the countries where migrants first arrive to process asylum requests. He said: “Let’s remember that who disembarks in Italy, disembarks in Europe.”

Humanitarian groups say migrants rescued off the coast of Libya shouldn’t be taken back to the North African country because they could face mistreatment there.

Johannes Bayer, a representatives of the German group Sea-Watch, said Thursday that “there needs to be a European solution” for the migrants picked up at sea.

Marie Naass of the group Lifeline told reporters in Berlin that its crews are regularly told by migrants that they’ve been tortured, raped or subjected to slavery in war-torn Libya.

The group’s ship picked up 216 men, 14 women and 4 children off Libya last week despite instructions from Italy not to do so because the migrants were Libya’s responsibility.

A European Union-funded program, called ‘Aurora,’ aims for Libya to establish a fully functioning maritime rescue co-ordinationcentre by 2020.

Aid groups and opposition lawmakers say the German government lacks compassion and doesn’t understand international law, after a migrant recue in the Mediterranean sparked criticism from officials.

Michel Brandt, a Left party lawmaker, accused Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer on Thursday of trying to criminalize humanitarian work.

Seehofer reportedly called for the ship Lifeline, which rescued 234 people off Libya last week despite instructions not to do so, to be impounded and its crew prosecuted.

A representative of Lifeline, Marie Naas, said humanitarian groups were “being made the scapegoats” for European governments’ failed policies.

She told reporters in Berlin the “only reason we exist is because states aren’t meeting their responsibility” to rescue people at sea.

Naas also slammed Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini for describing the migrants aboard Lifeline as “human meat.”

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz says he’s hopeful that the European Union summit starting Thursday could launch a “turnaround in migration policy.”

Kurz said that “being rescued in the Mediterranean must not automatically become a ticket to central Europe.”

Kurz became chancellor in December after campaigning to restrict migration, and his country takes over the EU’s rotating presidency for six months starting Sunday.

Kurz said as he arrived Thursday at the summit: “We’ve been calling a change of the system for years. We’ve been saying for years that it is necessary to reduce the number of people who come to Europe illegally, and I think that is possible today.”

He supports setting up landing points for migrants outside the EU and strengthening the bloc’s Frontex border agency.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is calling for a fundamental change in the European Union’s migration policy, saying that his country received little help even though it was at the forefront of receiving migrants from across the Mediterranean.

“Italy doesn’t need any more verbal signs, but of concrete deeds,” Conte said upon arrival at the EU summit in Brussels Thursday.

Italy’s proximity to North Africa has turned it into a key destination for migrant arrivals. Conte is insisting that burden be shared better across the EU. He wants to change an EU system currently in place which put the onus on any nation where the migrants first arrive.

Populist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has arrived at an EU summit with rhetorical guns blazing, describing the main issue of migration to Europe as an “invasion” that “should be stopped.”

Orban insists that beyond closing off borders, EU member states should also back those who have already arrived.

He says Thursday that “the people request two things. (The) first is, no migrants more in, so stop them. The second is, those who are in, should (be sent) back.”

He said both steps were necessary “to restore European democracy.”

“The invasion should be stopped and to stop the invasion means to have strong border,” Orban said on his way into the summit.

A German humanitarian group that’s been heavily criticized by European governments for rescuing migrants off the coast of Libya says it had no other choice.

A representative of Mission Lifeline said Thursday the group’s ship received a distress call in the night of June 20-21 and found an inflatable boat full of people 19 nautical miles off Libya’s coast.

Marie Naass told reporters in Berlin that the captain was told by the marine co-ordinationcentre in Rome to leave the rescue to Libya’s coast guard, but they never showed up.

Naass said the captain determined the migrants were in “acute danger” and picked them up. A second ship, 22 nautical miles off Libya’s coast, was also rescued.

She added that it was “a question of minutes, you have to decide quickly.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is insisting that European Union countries where migrants arrive deserve assistance, but has rejected the idea that refugees can choose which country to seek asylum in.

Merkel arrived Thursday at an EU summit, seeking progress on a long-elusive European approach to dealing with asylum-seekers amid heavy pressure from her interior minister, who is threatening turn migrants back from Germany’s borders unilaterally.

Merkel said that “the states that get a lot of refugees of course need protection and support, but on the other hand refugees and migrants cannot choose in which country they go through asylum proceedings.”

She said that protecting the EU’s external borders will be a key issue at the summit, and there could be discussions with North African countries about ships docking there.

The number of countries saying they will accept refugees rescued at sea by the German-run charity ship Lifeline has risen to nine.

Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said on Twitter Thursday that Norway has joined eight other countries that pledged a day earlier to take some of the 234 migrants who are deemed to be eligible for asylum. Those deemed economic refugees will be returned to their countries of origin.

The other eight countries are France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Belgium Ireland and Malta itself.

Malta allowed Lifeline to dock Wednesday after the ship was stuck for days at sea in Europe’s latest political impasse over how to cope with asylum-seekers and refugees.

A German humanitarian group has defended the captain and crew of its migrant rescue ship Lifeline, saying they “strictly abided by international law” at all times.

Malta is investigating whether Captain Claus-Peter Reisch broke the law and ignored instructions to take 234 migrants rescued off the Libyan coast to Libya — a charge echoed by France and Italy.

The Mission Lifeline group will hold a news conference Thursday, a day after the ship was allowed to dock in Malta.

On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to weigh into the debate, telling parliament that “there’s an obligation to let the Libyan coast guard to do their work.”

Aid groups and legal experts have questioned whether war-torn Libya is in a position to conduct proper search and rescue operations around its coastline.

Screening has begun for migrants who arrived in Malta after nearly a week at sea on a humanitarian rescue vessel, to determine whether they are eligible for asylum and relocation to one of eight European Union nations.

The screening process for the 234 migrants, including five children, began Thursday, the morning after they docked in the Maltese capital Valletta. The government said three babies and three adults were being treated at the national government hospital.

Malta Prime Minister Joseph Muscat opened the country’s main port to the German-run ship Lifeline after other EU nations agreed to accept some of the refugees. He said those deemed economic migrants will be sent back to their countries of origin.

Maltese officials seized the ship, citing irregularities in the rescue, and put the captain under investigation.

A Spanish rescue ship has set sail for international waters, carrying four European parliamentarians as EU nations bicker over managing migrant flows across the Mediterranean Sea.

The Astral departed Malta early Thursday to join the Open Arms rescue ship already in the search and rescue zone off the coast of Libya. Both are operated by the Spain-based NGO Proactiva Open Arms.

Three Spanish and one Italian lawmaker joined the mission as observers and plan to share their accounts at the next European plenary session July 2-5 in Strasbourg.

Astral’s captain Riccardo Gatti says he is not sure the boat will be allowed back into Maltese port. Several charity-run rescue ships have been denied port in Italy and Malta in recent weeks.</s>A humanitarian ship that has had some 130 rescued migrants on board for almost a week will enter a Maltese port on Wednesday, ending a standoff with Italy which refused to let the ship dock.

CASTILLE, Malta: A humanitarian ship that has had some 130 rescued migrants on board for almost a week will enter a Maltese port on Wednesday, ending a standoff with Italy which refused to let the ship dock.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told reporters seven European Union countries offered to share the burden of the migrants with Malta. The Lifeline ship, operated by German charity Mission Lifeline, is due to dock at around 1600 GMT.

"Lifeline will be granted permission to enter a Maltese port, where procedures for identification, ascertaining their asylum eligibility, and distribution to other member states will start immediately," Muscat said.</s>PARIS (Reuters) - Malta appears ready to allow the rescue ship Lifeline, stuck in international waters in the Mediterranean sea with more than 230 migrants aboard, to enter one of its ports after Italy refused, a French government spokesman said on Tuesday.

The solution was broached in discussions on Monday between French President Emmanuel Macron and Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said.

“A European solution may be to have the ship dock in Malta. It is the solution that seems to be shaping up at the moment,” Griveaux told RTL radio without elaborating.

“France would then be ready to send a team there to study individual (asylum) requests,” he said.

The Lifeline is the second rescue ship in weeks to expose Europe’s deep divisions over how to share refugees and economic migrants.

Leaders of the European Union failed on Sunday to come up with a joint position to tackle migration and will try again at a summit at the end of this week.

Earlier this month, a ship carrying more than 600 migrants, the Aquarius, was stranded similarly before it was accepted by Spain.</s>Rome, June 27 - Maltese Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia on Wednesday confirmed that the Lifeline had been given permission to enter Maltese waters but added that it had not been given the green light to dock.
Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat says that migrant rescue ship MV Lifeline, stranded in international waters with over 200 rescued people on board for five days, has been granted permission to dock on the island and will do so later today. Muscat says that those on board will be split among Malta and seven other European Union nations.