Italy's rejection of NGO ships carrying hundreds of migrants rescued from the Mediterranean has provoked new tensions in Europe over the handling of illegal migration.

With tensions high ahead of an EU summit starting Thursday, here is a timeline of the latest standoff which started more than two weeks ago.

Overnight on June 9 the rescue boat Aquarius, operated by French charity SOS Mediterranee, picks up 629 African migrants from the central Mediterranean.

Among them are at least seven pregnant women, 11 under-13s and 123 unaccompanied adolescents.

The Aquarius, sailing between Malta and Sicily, seeks a secure harbour to make land.

But Italy, whose new populist government has vowed a tough stance on immigration, closes its ports to the ship on June 9, insisting that Malta takes it in. Valetta also refuses.

On June 11, as international criticism grows, Spain's new Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says the stranded vessel can dock in the eastern port of Valencia.

The French charity running Aquarius warns the ship will have to travel 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) to reach Valencia and food supplies on board will run short.

SOS Mediterranee says the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre will transfer some of the migrants onto two Italian boats for the journey.

The three boats set sail for Valencia on June 12 as a political storm erupts among European leaders.

After several turbulent days at sea, the migrants begin disembarking in Valencia on June 17, met by a team of more than 2,000 people including 1,000 Red Cross volunteers and 470 translators

On June 12 French President Emmanuel Macron accuses Italy's leaders of "cynicism and irresponsibility" in refusing the ship.

The Italian government responds that it will not accept "hypocritical lessons from countries that have preferred to look the other way on immigration."

Three days later, Macron meets Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in Paris on June 15 with the pair agreeing the EU should set up asylum processing centres in Africa to prevent "voyages of death".

On June 13, the hardline interior ministers of Austria, Germany and Italy form an "axis of the willing" to combat illegal immigration.

In Germany, hardliners in Merkel's conservative bloc on June 18 give her an ultimatum to tighten asylum rules or risk pitching the country into a political crisis that would also rattle Europe.

In a bid to address the crisis, an emergency mini-summit of 16 EU leaders is called for June 24. But it is riven with divisions and snubbed by countries taking a hardline on migrant arrivals, including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

On June 21, Italy threatens to seize two rescue ships -- the Lifeline and the Seefuchs, both from German NGOs -- on suspicion they may be "illegally" flying the Dutch flag.

Italy and Malta also refuse to allow the Lifeline, carrying more than 230 people including pregnant women and children, to dock, and it is stranded in the Mediterranean.

Valetta, where the Seefuchs is moored, delivers humanitarian aid to the Lifeline.

On June 24, Italy's hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini tells foreign charities to stop rescuing migrants off Libya. Spanish NGO Proactiva accuses Rome of preventing its ship, Open Arms, from rescuing 1,000 migrants.

A day later, Salvini heads to Tripoli where he calls for processing centres to be set up south of Libya's borders as a way to block migrants bent on crossing the Mediterranean.

A container ship belonging to Denmark's Maersk, which is carrying 108 rescued migrants, says it is stuck off Sicily and waiting for instructions from Italian authorities.</s>BERLIN — The Latest on Europe’s migrant crisis (all times local):

Spain’s prime minister says his country is prepared to be part of a European response to the plight of a German-operated migrant aid ship, but isn’t specifying whether it will allow the vessel to dock.

Earlier this month, Spain took in 630 migrants from the French aid ship Aquarius after Malta and Italy refused it access. A similar situation has now arisen with a ship operated by the German aid group Mission Lifeline, which has been stuck off Malta since Thursday with 234 migrants aboard.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was asked during a visit to Berlin Tuesday whether Spain would offer safe harbour. He replied that “Spain will be in the common answer that we give, in this case, to the Lifeline ship but it has to be common, it has to be European, it has to be from various countries.”

The leader of Malta says his island nation is working to solve the case of a German-run rescue ship stuck in international waters with 234 migrants on board.

In a statement Tuesday, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said Malta aims “to prevent escalation into humanitarian crisis” by sharing the responsibility with other fellow EU nations. No details were given, and the statement did not say whether Malta would allow the vessel to dock.

The statement also said that Malta planned to investigate the captain of the Lifeline, run by a German non-governmental agency, nothing that he had ignored instructions.

The ship has been stranded for days since Italy’s populist interior minister refused to allow it access to ports, echoing the case of the Aquarius that was refused entry to Italy and Malta, only to be taken in by Spain, 1500 kilometres (900 miles) away.

Fearful of a domino effect if Germany closes its borders, Austria has conducted a high-profile training exercise to show how it could deal with an influx of migrants along its frontier with Slovenia.

Hundreds of police and soldiers staged a dry run Tuesday near Spielfeld, 175 kilometres (110 miles) south of Vienna. The town was a major crossing point for migrants in the summer and fall of 2015.

Thousands of migrants poured through Europe’s open borders daily three years ago, triggering a humanitarian and political crisis that has left deep divisions on the continent.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from conservative allies in Bavaria to turn migrants back at the border, a move that could prompt others to do the same.

Hardly any migrants have been arriving in Spielfeld recently.</s>A humanitarian rescue ship blocked at sea for nearly a week as European nations argued over its fate has arrived in Malta to disembark 234 migrants.

A humanitarian rescue ship blocked at sea for nearly a week as European nations argued over its fate has arrived in Malta to disembark 234 migrants.

Rescue ship docks in Malta after seven countries agree to take refugees

Malta’s prime minister Joseph Muscat announced earlier that the ship would be allowed to reach safe haven in Malta after seven other countries also agreed to take in those deemed eligible for refugee status.

He also said that the ship operated by a German aid group would be immediately impounded and the crew placed under investigation for allegedly operating illegally, including violating rescue orders and operating without proper registration.

On the ship’s approach, migrants crowded the deck wearing orange life jackets, many waving, as it entered the main port in Valletta under escort by a Malta patrol boat.

The commander of the ship operated by the German aid group Mission Lifeline sounded the boat’s horn with two long blasts to salute the migrants after their shared journey, and raised a yellow flag to signal permission to authorities to board.

One by one, the migrants were escorted off by officials and medical personnel in white overalls and gloves.

A girl in pink shorts no more than five years old — one of five children on the ship — was cradled gingerly by an official. One man walked unsteadily, leaning on a helper, while another wearing shorts and a white polo shirt was barefoot and wrapped in a red blanket.

While Mr Muscat emphasised that the Lifeline case was unique because of the alleged violations of the crew, the refusal by Italy and Malta to open their ports to the ship – and the haggling among EU states over how to distribute the migrants – showed a hardening of positions as EU leaders head into a summit where migration policies are expected to be debated.

Earlier this month, Italy and Malta both refused port to French humanitarian ship the Aquarius, forcing some 630 migrants to travel an additional 900 miles to Spain.

The fate of the ship operated by the German group had appeared resolved a day earlier when Italy announced it would take some of the migrants and Malta would open its ports.

But Malta later said the ship was not welcome until it had a deal for all of the migrants on board. On Wednesday, Malta allowed the ship to enter its waters to seek shelter from rough sea conditions, before announcing it could dock.

Lifeline said that along with the worsening weather, some migrants were in fragile health.

Manuel Sarrazin, an MP with the German Green party who is in regular contact with the crew and its supporters, said the situation on board the Lifeline was deteriorating.

He said: “Last night they were close to calling emergencies to evacuate two people.

“Doctors on board were able to stabilise them so the evacuation, which would have been very dangerous, didn’t have to take place.”

Mr Sarrazin added that the passengers are suffering from severe sea sickness due to rough seas.

“They are at risk of dehydration. It’s been clear for days that the situation could get worse. There needs to be a solution soon.”

The stand-off came ahead of an EU summit at which Italy will propose a new system for distributing migrants more evenly among EU countries along with ways to discourage economic migrants from leaving Africa.

Italy and Greece have borne the brunt of the arrivals in recent years as people make the dangerous sea journey to seek a better life in Europe, often fleeing war and oppression.</s>Brussels, June 27 - Italy is ready to block the conclusions of the upcoming EU summit on migrants, sources said Wednesday. It is ready to do so, they said, unless the final text includes the concept of shared responsibility on sea rescues. The sources said this was the 'red line' for Rome. Italy is asking that there should be support from the other EU countries in the docking of of ships carrying out activities of search and rescue in the Mediterranean, and in the redistribution of migrants, the sources said. In essence, that would mean overcoming the Dublin Regulation and the country of entry's responsibility for migrant registration. If the concept of shared responsibility is accepted, the sources said, and a recognition of the need to work on arrivals, Rome is willing to collaborate on secondary movements, a delicate issue for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is vying with hawkish Interior Minister Horts Seehofer on this at a domestic level. As well, Italy will agree to having closed centres for migrants if other countresi do so at the request of France and Spain. Earlier Premier Giuseppe Conte said that the European Union must overhaul the Dublin Regulation on asylum. "The Dublin Regulation should be surpassed because there is no doubt that it is inadequate for the management of migratory flows," Conte said as he reported to the Lower House ahead of this week's summit. The regulation states that the country where an asylum seeker first arrives in the EU must handle the relative asylum request. This means that the burden of migrant flows from North Africa has fallen almost entirely upon Italy due to its geographic position. Italy is seeking to make this week's summit a turning point for the bloc, Conte said. "Italy's contribution can make the European Council a watershed," he said. "We must make it possible to design the Europe that we want". Conte stressed that his government "speaks with only one, firm and resolute, voice in Europe". "Italy is a net contributor to the EU budget, we think we deserve more attention" he added. The Lower House on Wednesday approved a resolution presented by the ruling majority, the League and the 5-Star Movement (M5S), on Conte's report to parliament ahead of this week's European summit. The resolution, which was approved with 320 votes in favour, 119 against and 126 abstentions, called for the government to pursue a strategy seeking to introduce migrant-reception centres in the countries of origin and transit, among other things. Conte will make a official visit to Washington for a bilateral meeting with United States President Donald Trump on July 30, sources said Wednesday. Earlier this month Trump told Fox News that Conte was "fantastic" and that "it seems being tough on immigration now pays". Meanwhile Maltese Premier Joseph Muscat said Wednesday that the Lifeline will be given permission to dock in Malta later in the day, adding that the migrant-rescue ship is set to be impounded. The ship, which is at the centre of an international wrangle, was given permission to enter Maltese waters to shelter from bad weather conditions earlier on Wednesday but did not get the green light to dock. "The Lifeline will be sequestered for the launch of an investigation," Muscat told a news conference. "The captain of the vessel ignored international laws". The NGO ship has been stranded for days in the Mediterranean after picking up the migrants in distress off the Libyan coast. The Italian government had threatened to impound the Lifeline if it came to Italy, saying the rescue was illegal. Italian Premier Conte said Tuesday that Malta had agreed to allow it to land there as part of a deal under which Italy and other EU countries would receive quotas of the migrants on board. However, the spokesman for the NGO, Axel Steier, told ANSA that German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer had stopped Germany from taking part in the agreement to take in a share of the 233 migrants onboard. Steier said Seehofer was "Germany's Salvini". Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has spearheaded the tough stance on migrants of the new League/5-Star Movement (M5S) government that saw another NGO-run migrant-rescue ship, the Aquarius, have to travel to Valencia after it was denied permission to dock in an Italian port. Salvini continued his spat with French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview released by CNN on Wednesday. "Macron talks about values, but he doesn't recognize the values itself, and therefore they have no lessons to give to Italy," Salvini told CNN after the French leader criticised his tough stance on migrants. "With nice words we never obtained anything. In this month of government with our actions, we managed to be listened to - the Spanish intervened, Malta must intervene, and so do the French, the German, the Dutch ... it's clear that we need a different kind of politics. "We need to revisit the Dublin rules (on asylum), we need to invest in Africa. But I think we obtained more in this month than in the previous six years of chatter". (Speaking outside the Italian parliament, Salvin added that Macron is "acting up" and criticising the Italian government because his ratings have slumped to a new low. The deputy premier said "France must clear things up with the Italians and with itself: Macron is acting up because his popularity is at an all-time low in his country". Salvini added that Macron's caress for Pope Francis at an audience in the Vatican Tuesday was "something that has never been seen before".) Salvini also told CNN that being called a populist was a "compliment for me". The deputy premier said "the term populist is used as an insult but it's a compliment for me". He said "listening to people, being a minister who goes around cities, squares, stations and hospitals is a duty and a pleasure for me". (Salvini also said trade tariffs, floated by coalition partner and Industry Minister Luigi Di Maio Tuesday, could defend Italians' jobs and health. Asked if he agreed with Di Maio, Salvini said "I will support all government proposals to defend the jobs and health of the Italians". He said "outlawed products, agricultural and commercial, are arriving which are a danger to health. "All protection also means commercial protections," he said.)</s>MILAN (AP) - A German aid ship carrying more than 200 migrants headed toward Malta after Italy agreed Tuesday to take in some of the passengers, ending Europe's second impasse this month over the people rescued off Libya's coast by private humanitarian groups.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said after a phone call with the Maltese prime minister that the boat operated by Mission Lifeline would disembark in Malta and its legal standing would be investigated.

"Italy will do its part to accept a quota of migrants aboard the Lifeline, with the hope that also other European countries would do the same, as some have previously indicated," Conte said in a statement.

The Lifeline has been blocked in the Mediterranean Sea since last week, when both Italy and Malta refused to grant it access to their ports.

The impasse was similar to another this month over the Aquarius, a rescue ship operated by French aid groups. The ship carrying 630 migrants had its journey to land extended by a week after Malta and Italy would not grant docking rights. Spain ultimately agreed to accept the passengers, and the Aquarius traveled an additional 1,500-kilometers (900-miles) to get there.

Italy's Sky TG24, which visited the Lifeline on Monday, said it was about four times over passenger capacity and running low on fuel. According to Sky, it had on board 224 migrants, including eight children, and 10 crew members.

Italy's new hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has made clear he doesn't want rescue ships run by non-governmental agencies to ferry migrants to Italy any more. Conte is pressing is European peers to take on more of the migrant burden when they meet at a summit later this week.

In a tweet about the Lifeline, Salvini said the "illegal ship will finally be seized" when it arrives in Malta, adding, "For women and children truly fleeing war, the ports are open, for all the others, no."

Salvini has likened the ships run by private aid groups under non-Italian flags to taxi services that are serving migrant smugglers.

Italy hasn't taken the same position with other ships. It allowed the Danish-flagged container ship Alexander Maersk to dock and disembark 108 migrants in Sicily on Tuesday after days at sea.

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat earlier pressed other EU nations to take on a share of the migrants. He also said that Malta intended to investigate the actions of the ship's captain, who ignored instructions from Italian authorities coordinating the rescue. Authorities have also questioned the legality of the ship, which has a Dutch flag but is run by a German group.

In his proposals for dealing with migration, Conte has emphasized that migrants arriving in Italy are arriving in Europe, and responsibility for them should be shared by all the member states.

"The obligation of rescue cannot become an obligation to process all the requests on behalf of everyone," the proposal reads, asserting that only 7 percent of migrants arriving in Europe qualify as refugees.</s>ROME: Malta will let the rescue ship Lifeline dock after Italy refused it entry, ending the vessel’s near week-long wait in the Mediterranean with more than 230 migrants on board, Italy’s prime minister said on Tuesday.

 The offer resolved a standoff with Rome, where a new populist government, co-led by the anti-immigrant League party, has shaken European migration policy by announcing it will no longer let in ships operated by charities that rescue migrants. The dangerous sea route to Italy has been the main route into Europe for asylum seekers from Africa, many thousands of whom have died at sea over the past few years.

 Lifeline said overnight one person had to be evacuated for medical reasons and that general conditions onboard were worsening.

 Mission Lifeline, the aid group that runs the ship, welcomed Malta’s offer but said on Twitter “we now need EU countries to welcome the people.”

 Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said his Maltese counterpart Joseph Muscat told him about his decision in a phone call.

 The Lifeline has already spent five days stuck in international waters.

 After reaching Malta, the migrants will be divided up among European Union members who are willing to take them in, Conte said.

 He did not say when it would arrive. Conte said the ship would then be impounded and its captain investigated over reports that he ignored instructions to let the Libyan coastguard pick up the migrants.

 Malta has yet to confirm, but issued a statement earlier saying it had been participating in discussions with Brussels to find a diplomatic solution that involved “the sharing of responsibility by a number of member states”. Immigration has become an urgent political issue across Europe in recent weeks, since the new government took power in Italy and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition split over the issue. Europe took in more than a million migrants, mainly asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, in 2015.

 Since then, the numbers have fallen sharply. One main route, from Turkey to Greece, was largely shut in 2016, and numbers have fallen to tens of thousands so far this year, a 77 per cent decline on 2017, when almost 120,000 came to Italy.

 But the issue still sharply divides European governments and has led to a surge in anti-immigrant and far right political movements across the continent. Countries that have taken in large numbers of asylum seekers want other EU countries to share the burden. Eastern European states, which have taken in among the smallest numbers so far, refuse to accept more and have turned the issue into a central focus for nationalist governments. — Reuters</s>After a week-long standoff, an aid ship carrying 234 migrants docked Wednesday in Malta, as seven fellow European Union countries have agreed to share acceptance of the refugees with the tiny island nation.

Malta, along with Italy, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal reached an agreement to split the refugees amongst them. The ship rescued the refugees of the coast of Libya this past Thursday, before becoming stranded Friday in the Mediterranean Sea as negotiations over accepting the refugees stalled.

The ship, known as the Lifeline, was operated by German aid group Mission Lifeline. It had earlier been shut out of Italian ports; Matteo Salvini, Italian interior minister and member of the far-right Liga party, had previously told his E.U. colleagues he would not let the country be a “refugee camp.”

According to the Associated Press, Salvini said further private rescue vessels would no longer be welcome, as they “cannot dictate Italy’s immigration policy.”

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said Wednesday the country would vet the migrants to determine if they are refugees or economic migrants — the former group to be resettled, the latter group to be returned to their home countries, Muscat said.

Muscat said the captain of the ship also would be questioned, alleging that he had ignored instructions from the Italian government. A spokesperson for Sea Watch, an organization helping coordinate the Lifeline mission, disputed Muscat’s claim.

Absent from the agreement was E.U. heavyweight Germany. Immigration has become a divisive issue in the nation; a million refugees have entered the country since 2015, the Associated Press reported.

Longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel has seen her ruling coalition at risk of collapse over the issue in recent months. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, has broken with Merkel on her open-door refugee policy, having advocated to turn away refugees.

Merkel is a member of the more center-right Christian Democratic Party, currently in control of the German government in coalition with the CSU and the Social Democratic Party.

On Thursday and Friday, E.U. leaders will participate in a summit in Brussels to discuss further management of migration. Members of the CSU have warned that if Merkel does not come out of the summit with a concrete solution, the coalition could fracture.

“I do not understand talking about possible future solutions for Europe while not being prepared to do what Germany can do now,” said Alexander Dobrindt, the CSU’s parliamentary leader, according to Politico. “We need to act now.”</s>The Latest: No decisions at 'frank and open' migration talks

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Latest on immigration into Europe (all times local):

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says emergency talks European leaders held on migration didn't yield any decisions but that the participants agreed they need to work together on the politically fraught issue.

Sanchez told reporters that Sunday's meeting involving the heads of at least 16 EU countries were "frank and open," but "we don't have any concrete consequences or conclusions."

He says: "Everyone agreed on the need to have a European vision; a common position on a common challenge."

As the meeting got started, several countries threw their weight behind the idea of setting up migrant reception centers in Africa to screen asylum-seekers before they depart for Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says a summit of 16 European Union countries has created "a lot of goodwill" to discuss EU disagreements on migration.

Merkel and 15 other European leaders met in Brussels on Sunday to tackle the immigration policies that have divided the bloc since more than 1 million migrants arrived in 2015.

The German chancellor said the summit participants agreed that Europe's outer borders need to be better protected to keep people from entering illegally and that "all countries should share all the burdens" related to migration.

Merkel says the countries that most migrants reach first shouldn't be left alone to deal with the influx and that it also shouldn't be up to newcomers to decide in which European country they get to apply for asylum.

Italy's coast guard is responding to a Spanish aid group's criticism of having its offer to help rescue some 1,000 migrants from the Mediterranean Sea declined, saying the responsibility for coordinating the rescue has been handed off to Libya.

Italian coast guard officials said they received distress calls from six different migrant boats Sunday that were in Libya's search-and-rescue territory. The Italians said they alerted ships in the area and formally advised the Libyan coast guard, which officially took over the rescue.

Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms complained that Italy's coast guard declined its offer of help.

Italy's hard-line new government has refused to let aid groups' rescue ships dock, arguing that they are serving as taxi services for Libyan-based human traffickers. Italy has also sought to bolster the Libyan coast guard's patrol capacity, but human rights organizations say Libya isn't a safe place for migrants.

The Italian government's proposal for revamping how Europe manages migration calls for creating "international protection centers" that would screen asylum requests in common countries of transit.

The 10-point plan Premier Giuseppe Conte presented at an emergency meeting in Brussels on Sunday also seeks more European Union support to help the Libyan coast guard better patrol its coasts for departing migrant boats.

The plan argues that existing European asylum rules are obsolete and "paradoxical." The regulation effectively means migrants can only apply for asylum in the European country where they first arrive, usually Italy or Greece.

The Italian proposal says other European countries must create welcome centers for asylum-seekers so the burden is dispersed.

It also calls for EU investment in migrants' home countries, presumably as a way to persuade them to stay.

Italy's firebrand interior minister is defending Italy's decision to ask the Libyan coast guard to rescue an estimated 1,000 migrants without the help of aid groups.

Matteo Salvini was responding to the alarm raised by Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms, which said Italian coast guard authorities had declined their offer to come to the migrants' rescue.

In a tweet Sunday, Salvini said: "It's right that the Libyan authorities intervene, as they've been doing for days, without having the NGOs interrupt them and disturb them."

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colao, who previously offered Barcelona as a port when Italy refused entry to another aid group's rescue ship, repeated her willingness to take in the migrants and urged Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to intervene to allow Proactiva's ship to "save lives."

She said: "Italy wants to leave the migrants in the hands of Libya, where they torture, rape and enslave" migrants.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is urging his European Union partners to help Spain deal with the arrival of thousands of migrants from Africa across the Mediterranean Sea.

Sanchez said Sunday that he will request "the support of our comrades, of our state members, in order to control better the flow that we are suffering nowadays from the western Mediterranean."

Spain has seen a sharp rise in migrant arrivals. The U.N.'s refugee agency says around 40,000 people have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year, some 16,000 in Italy, 12,000 in Greece and 12,000 in Spain.

Tensions between Italy and Malta are flaring anew over the fate of a German rescue ship with 234 migrants aboard that has been denied a port to disembark them.

Malta's home affairs minister, Michael Farrugia, and Italy's transport minister, Danilo Toninelli, engaged in a Twitter war of words Sunday over which country was being more "inhuman" about the fate of the Lifeline and its passengers.

Italy has demanded Malta let the Lifeline dock since it's currently in Maltese waters. Farrugia tweeted Sunday "Why weren't they allowed to dock immediately in Italy, like Italy is now asking Malta? That's the true inhumanity."

Maltese Premier Joseph Muscat sought to lower the rhetoric as he arrived Sunday in Brussels for a migration meeting, saying now was not the time for a "blame game."

For its part, the Lifeline issued a tweet to Italy's hard-line interior minister: "Dear Matteo Salvini, we have no meat on board, but humans. We cordially invite you to convince yourself that it is people we have saved from drowning."

French President Emmanuel Macron is saying that any solution to immigration should be based on the human rights and solidarity principles that the European Union stands for.

Speaking as he came into the EU's informal mini-summit Sunday on migration, Macron said if no deal could be found among all 28 EU nations, a smaller group of them could push ahead to deal with the issue. Migration across the Mediterranean Sea is down sharply from last year but it is dominating Europe's political agenda.

As such, he echoed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was also calling for bi- and trilateral agreements among member states to make progress now.

The core of any agreement though, he said, must be the steadfast respect of human rights.

"The values of Europe are the respect for human rights and individuals, the respect for nations and their integrity. It is the solidarity that holds us together," he said.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has accused Italy's new populist government of being "anti-European" in its immigration policies by putting national self-interests ahead of efforts to forge a united front in the European Union.

But he also notes that other EU countries have failed to help Italy cope with the arrivals of large numbers of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea.

Sanchez tells the El Pais newspaper the EU's biggest challenge at the moment is "europhobia," as some EU members shrink from agreeing on common policies.

His comments come as EU leaders gather in Brussels to discuss a more unified approach to migration.

Spain's new center-left government is taking a more open stance on migration, including extending public health care to undocumented foreigners.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is downplaying expectations that the EU summit next Thursday will be able to come to a full agreement on how to deal with migration.

Merkel instead is pushing for bilateral and trilateral deals to cope with the immediate emergencies with migrants coming into Europe.

Merkel, speaking as she entered Sunday's mini-summit of 16 of 28 EU nations in Brussels, says EU nations have to see "how can we help each other without always having to wait for all 28, but by thinking what's important to whom."

Instead of difficult overall deals among all member states, she says "it is also about bi and trilateral agreements for mutual benefit."

Italy is presenting what it says is a radical new proposal for Europe to handle migration that it says should replace the existing regulation that determines how asylum claims are handled.

Premier Giuseppe Conte is unveiling his strategy for migration at a meeting Sunday in Brussels with 15 other EU countries. He said the plan represents a "paradigm change" in the divisive issue.

Without giving details, Conte said the Italian plan is "efficient and sustainable." He said it would replace the Dublin regulation on asylum — that migrants must ask for asylum in the EU nation where they land — which he said was negotiated as an emergency solution.

He said the Italian plan seeks to "confront the problem in a structural way."

Conte has previously said the Italian proposal calls for creating "hotspots" in the most common homelands for migrants and in transit nations to identify asylum candidates.

A Spanish aid group that has rescued thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea says there are seven boats with about 1,000 migrants aboard in need of rescue off Libya's coast, but that Italy has declined its offer of help.

Proactiva Open Arms says in a tweet Sunday that Italian coast guard authorities who coordinate rescues sent out advisories to all ships in the area but told Proactiva: "We don't need your help."

Proactiva says Italy is seeking to have the Libyan coast guard conduct the rescues and bring the migrants back to North Africa.

Under its new anti-migrant government, Italy has refused to let aid groups dock in Italian ports, arguing they are encouraging smugglers. Up until Sunday, Italy's rescue coordination center had still engaged with the groups at sea during actual rescues.

There was no answer Sunday at the Italian coast guard.

Italy's populist 5-Star Movement is demanding that European countries step up and actually take action to deal with hundreds of thousands of migrants on the continent, warning that the future of Europe is at stake.

The 5-Stars, who are in a ruling coalition with the anti-migrant League party, penned a blog Sunday titled "The migrant hypocrisy sinks Europe" as EU leaders met in Brussels on migration.

The post complained that few countries even came close to accepting the redistributed migrants they pledged to under a failed 2015 EU plan to ease the burden on Italy and Greece.

The post said: "It's time for Europe to find itself again in the principles that everyone preaches, but few sincerely practice," saying what is at stake is "the future of Europe as a political community and its values."

The leaders of Germany, France and about a dozen other European Union nations are converging on Brussels for an afternoon of informal talks on differences over migration ahead of a full EU summit that starts next Thursday.

Facing a domestic political crisis in Germany over the topic, Chancellor Angela Merkel will be seeking to get EU leaders to forge a joint approach to manage the influx of migrants and refugees, a divisive issue which is now back at the heart of the EU too.

There are deep divisions over who should take responsibility for arriving migrants, how long they should be required to accommodate them, and what should be done to help those EU countries hardest hit like Italy and Greece.

Looking for common ground among a few key nations, the informal mini-summit now involves about 16 member states, as others demanded to take part.

To further complicate matters, four eastern EU countries— the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia —refused to attend and reject taking in migrants in general.</s>A rescue boat stranded for nearly a week in the Mediterranean with over 200 migrants docked in Malta Wednesday, after a deal was struck between a group of EU states to take them in.

Lifeline, a vessel for the German charity Mission Lifeline, has been waiting to be allocated a port for six days after rescuing 234 migrants off the coast of Libya last Thursday.

The migrants on board will be distributed among eight EU nations who have agreed to take them in, Maltese Prime minister Joseph Muscat said Wednesday.

So far Malta, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium and France have agreed to welcome some of the migrants.

Muscat said that after the migrants had disembarked, the Lifeline ship would be impounded in order to carry out an investigation into its legal status and actions on the night of the rescue.

However, Muscat warned that the situation was "unique" and could not be considered a blueprint for handling future rescues.

Mission Lifeline has come under fire from EU leaders who accuse it of contravening international law by rescuing the migrants when the Libyan coastguard was already intervening.

Belgium and Luxembourg said they would each take 15 of the Lifeline migrants. The Netherlands will take 20.

Theo Francken, Belgian minster for asylum and migration, tweeted that Belgium would help Malta but that it must be one-off operation.

Many passengers were suffering from seasickness and three were in the ship's hospital facility, according to Lifeline. One passenger has been evacuated, leaving 233 currently on board.

The eight EU nations agreed to take in a share of those on board after days of bickering over the migrants' fate.

The NGO's co-founder Axel Steier blamed Germany's failure to participate in the deal on the country's hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.

Seehofer has taken a strong stance on immigration and given German Chancellor Angela Merkel an ultimatum to curb arrivals to Germany.

Mission Lifeline has hit back at criticism levelled at it by EU leaders.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the charity had contravened "all the rules" by rescuing the migrants when the Libya coastguard was already intervening.

Macron accused Mission Lifeline of "playing into the hands of smugglers".

But the charity denied breaking the law in a statement on Wednesday.

"There have been a number of false accusations that Lifeline ignores orders by different MRCCs (maritime rescue coordination centres)," said Steier.

Lifeline argued the migrants would not be safe in Libya, where they have faced abuse and rape in holding centres, and that returning them there would breach international refugee law.

"The only order the ship denied was to hand over people to the so-called Libyan coastguard, as this would have been not in line with the Geneva Refugee Convention and therefore criminal."

The vessel's fate had been hanging in the balance since last week as bloc members remained at loggerheads over how to handle the influx of people trying to reach the continent.

Malta and Italy initially refused to take in the migrants, but on Tuesday Valletta agreed to let the ship dock when other EU states confirmed they would help.

Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had hailed the news that a second migrant ship he had turned away was being taken in elsewhere.

Earlier this month, Rome rejected the Aquarius ship carrying 630 migrants, forcing it to eventually dock in Spain.

"For women and children really fleeing the war the doors are open, for everyone else they are not!" Salvini tweeted.

The decision by Italy's new hardline government to turn away rescue vessels has plunged Europe into a political crisis over how to collectively handle the huge numbers of people migrating from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Italy and Malta say they are unfairly bearing the brunt of the new arrivals, while other European countries are urging more forceful policies to block their entry.

Sixteen EU leaders held emergency talks in Brussels on Sunday in a bid to break the longstanding deadlock over who should take in the migrants.

A full EU summit is scheduled for Thursday and Friday.</s>The Latest: No decisions at 'frank and open' migration talks

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Latest on immigration into Europe (all times local):

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says emergency talks European leaders held on migration didn't yield any decisions but that the participants agreed they need to work together on the politically fraught issue.

Sanchez told reporters that Sunday's meeting involving the heads of at least 16 EU countries were "frank and open," but "we don't have any concrete consequences or conclusions."

He says: "Everyone agreed on the need to have a European vision; a common position on a common challenge."

As the meeting got started, several countries threw their weight behind the idea of setting up migrant reception centers in Africa to screen asylum-seekers before they depart for Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says a summit of 16 European Union countries has created "a lot of goodwill" to discuss EU disagreements on migration.

Merkel and 15 other European leaders met in Brussels on Sunday to tackle the immigration policies that have divided the bloc since more than 1 million migrants arrived in 2015.

The German chancellor said the summit participants agreed that Europe's outer borders need to be better protected to keep people from entering illegally and that "all countries should share all the burdens" related to migration.

Merkel says the countries that most migrants reach first shouldn't be left alone to deal with the influx and that it also shouldn't be up to newcomers to decide in which European country they get to apply for asylum.

Italy's coast guard is responding to a Spanish aid group's criticism of having its offer to help rescue some 1,000 migrants from the Mediterranean Sea declined, saying the responsibility for coordinating the rescue has been handed off to Libya.

Italian coast guard officials said they received distress calls from six different migrant boats Sunday that were in Libya's search-and-rescue territory. The Italians said they alerted ships in the area and formally advised the Libyan coast guard, which officially took over the rescue.

Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms complained that Italy's coast guard declined its offer of help.

Italy's hard-line new government has refused to let aid groups' rescue ships dock, arguing that they are serving as taxi services for Libyan-based human traffickers. Italy has also sought to bolster the Libyan coast guard's patrol capacity, but human rights organizations say Libya isn't a safe place for migrants.

The Italian government's proposal for revamping how Europe manages migration calls for creating "international protection centers" that would screen asylum requests in common countries of transit.

The 10-point plan Premier Giuseppe Conte presented at an emergency meeting in Brussels on Sunday also seeks more European Union support to help the Libyan coast guard better patrol its coasts for departing migrant boats.

The plan argues that existing European asylum rules are obsolete and "paradoxical." The regulation effectively means migrants can only apply for asylum in the European country where they first arrive, usually Italy or Greece.

The Italian proposal says other European countries must create welcome centers for asylum-seekers so the burden is dispersed.

It also calls for EU investment in migrants' home countries, presumably as a way to persuade them to stay.

Italy's firebrand interior minister is defending Italy's decision to ask the Libyan coast guard to rescue an estimated 1,000 migrants without the help of aid groups.

Matteo Salvini was responding to the alarm raised by Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms, which said Italian coast guard authorities had declined their offer to come to the migrants' rescue.

In a tweet Sunday, Salvini said: "It's right that the Libyan authorities intervene, as they've been doing for days, without having the NGOs interrupt them and disturb them."

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colao, who previously offered Barcelona as a port when Italy refused entry to another aid group's rescue ship, repeated her willingness to take in the migrants and urged Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to intervene to allow Proactiva's ship to "save lives."

She said: "Italy wants to leave the migrants in the hands of Libya, where they torture, rape and enslave" migrants.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is urging his European Union partners to help Spain deal with the arrival of thousands of migrants from Africa across the Mediterranean Sea.

Sanchez said Sunday that he will request "the support of our comrades, of our state members, in order to control better the flow that we are suffering nowadays from the western Mediterranean."

Spain has seen a sharp rise in migrant arrivals. The U.N.'s refugee agency says around 40,000 people have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year, some 16,000 in Italy, 12,000 in Greece and 12,000 in Spain.

Tensions between Italy and Malta are flaring anew over the fate of a German rescue ship with 234 migrants aboard that has been denied a port to disembark them.

Malta's home affairs minister, Michael Farrugia, and Italy's transport minister, Danilo Toninelli, engaged in a Twitter war of words Sunday over which country was being more "inhuman" about the fate of the Lifeline and its passengers.

Italy has demanded Malta let the Lifeline dock since it's currently in Maltese waters. Farrugia tweeted Sunday "Why weren't they allowed to dock immediately in Italy, like Italy is now asking Malta? That's the true inhumanity."

Maltese Premier Joseph Muscat sought to lower the rhetoric as he arrived Sunday in Brussels for a migration meeting, saying now was not the time for a "blame game."

For its part, the Lifeline issued a tweet to Italy's hard-line interior minister: "Dear Matteo Salvini, we have no meat on board, but humans. We cordially invite you to convince yourself that it is people we have saved from drowning."

French President Emmanuel Macron is saying that any solution to immigration should be based on the human rights and solidarity principles that the European Union stands for.

Speaking as he came into the EU's informal mini-summit Sunday on migration, Macron said if no deal could be found among all 28 EU nations, a smaller group of them could push ahead to deal with the issue. Migration across the Mediterranean Sea is down sharply from last year but it is dominating Europe's political agenda.

As such, he echoed German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was also calling for bi- and trilateral agreements among member states to make progress now.

The core of any agreement though, he said, must be the steadfast respect of human rights.

"The values of Europe are the respect for human rights and individuals, the respect for nations and their integrity. It is the solidarity that holds us together," he said.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has accused Italy's new populist government of being "anti-European" in its immigration policies by putting national self-interests ahead of efforts to forge a united front in the European Union.

But he also notes that other EU countries have failed to help Italy cope with the arrivals of large numbers of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea.

Sanchez tells the El Pais newspaper the EU's biggest challenge at the moment is "europhobia," as some EU members shrink from agreeing on common policies.

His comments come as EU leaders gather in Brussels to discuss a more unified approach to migration.

Spain's new center-left government is taking a more open stance on migration, including extending public health care to undocumented foreigners.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is downplaying expectations that the EU summit next Thursday will be able to come to a full agreement on how to deal with migration.

Merkel instead is pushing for bilateral and trilateral deals to cope with the immediate emergencies with migrants coming into Europe.

Merkel, speaking as she entered Sunday's mini-summit of 16 of 28 EU nations in Brussels, says EU nations have to see "how can we help each other without always having to wait for all 28, but by thinking what's important to whom."

Instead of difficult overall deals among all member states, she says "it is also about bi and trilateral agreements for mutual benefit."

Italy is presenting what it says is a radical new proposal for Europe to handle migration that it says should replace the existing regulation that determines how asylum claims are handled.

Premier Giuseppe Conte is unveiling his strategy for migration at a meeting Sunday in Brussels with 15 other EU countries. He said the plan represents a "paradigm change" in the divisive issue.

Without giving details, Conte said the Italian plan is "efficient and sustainable." He said it would replace the Dublin regulation on asylum — that migrants must ask for asylum in the EU nation where they land — which he said was negotiated as an emergency solution.

He said the Italian plan seeks to "confront the problem in a structural way."

Conte has previously said the Italian proposal calls for creating "hotspots" in the most common homelands for migrants and in transit nations to identify asylum candidates.

A Spanish aid group that has rescued thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea says there are seven boats with about 1,000 migrants aboard in need of rescue off Libya's coast, but that Italy has declined its offer of help.

Proactiva Open Arms says in a tweet Sunday that Italian coast guard authorities who coordinate rescues sent out advisories to all ships in the area but told Proactiva: "We don't need your help."

Proactiva says Italy is seeking to have the Libyan coast guard conduct the rescues and bring the migrants back to North Africa.

Under its new anti-migrant government, Italy has refused to let aid groups dock in Italian ports, arguing they are encouraging smugglers. Up until Sunday, Italy's rescue coordination center had still engaged with the groups at sea during actual rescues.

There was no answer Sunday at the Italian coast guard.

Italy's populist 5-Star Movement is demanding that European countries step up and actually take action to deal with hundreds of thousands of migrants on the continent, warning that the future of Europe is at stake.

The 5-Stars, who are in a ruling coalition with the anti-migrant League party, penned a blog Sunday titled "The migrant hypocrisy sinks Europe" as EU leaders met in Brussels on migration.

The post complained that few countries even came close to accepting the redistributed migrants they pledged to under a failed 2015 EU plan to ease the burden on Italy and Greece.

The post said: "It's time for Europe to find itself again in the principles that everyone preaches, but few sincerely practice," saying what is at stake is "the future of Europe as a political community and its values."

The leaders of Germany, France and about a dozen other European Union nations are converging on Brussels for an afternoon of informal talks on differences over migration ahead of a full EU summit that starts next Thursday.

Facing a domestic political crisis in Germany over the topic, Chancellor Angela Merkel will be seeking to get EU leaders to forge a joint approach to manage the influx of migrants and refugees, a divisive issue which is now back at the heart of the EU too.

There are deep divisions over who should take responsibility for arriving migrants, how long they should be required to accommodate them, and what should be done to help those EU countries hardest hit like Italy and Greece.

Looking for common ground among a few key nations, the informal mini-summit now involves about 16 member states, as others demanded to take part.

To further complicate matters, four eastern EU countries— the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia —refused to attend and reject taking in migrants in general.
Container ship MV Alexander Maersk is allowed by Italian authorities to dock in Pozzallo, Sicily, after several days. There, it discharges over 100 rescued migrants. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte says German migrant rescue ship MV Lifeline will be permitted to dock in Malta in a deal that will see some of the migrants on board come to Italy.