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Spain to accept Malta rejects
29/05/2007 18:44 - (SA)
Ingrid Melander and Teresa Larraz
Madrid - Spain will accept 26 Africans who were refused permission to disembark in Malta but wants rules clarified on who should take migrants rescued at sea, the Spanish government said on Tuesday.
Malta refused to allow a Spanish tugboat land the would-be migrants on Monday, arguing they were not found in its water.
"It wasn't clear whose responsibility they were," said a spokesperson for Spain's Foreign Ministry.
"But we do have a clear idea that you can't let people die at sea."
Only days before, another 27 shipwrecked Africans spent three days clinging to tuna nets in the open Mediterranean while Malta and Libya argued over who should rescue them, until they were eventually picked up by the Italian Navy.
Photographs of the people hanging onto the huge circular net towed by a Maltese boat which refused to let them aboard raised once again the issue of how Europe deals with migrants who often die in the attempt to find a better life.
'Complex' rules
"It's important to clear the rules up," the Spanish spokesperson said after confirming Spain would receive the 26 aboard the tugboat Montfalco, who were picked up while their wooden vessel foundered in heavy seas.
The Africans are believed to be from Ivory Coast and likely to request political asylum.
While Spanish ships regularly pick up migrants at sea, Madrid has been taking a tougher line with Africans trying to sail into its territory and earlier this month said it would repatriate 1 000 who arrived in the Canary Islands.
In Brussels, European Commission migration spokesperson Friso Roscam Abbing said ships and governments had the duty to rescue people they found in danger at sea but that rules governing such cases were very complex.
Crowded conditions
"Co-operation does not yet work," he said, urging all EU states to make an effort to agree quickly on who is responsible for taking people when such an event occurs.
The Montfalco was due to arrive in Spain in two or three days. Conditions aboard were crowded but manageable, the ship's captain, Ruben Vasquez, told Spanish national radio.
"It was foul weather and we had to take them aboard. We realised they were good people," he said, adding that they hadn't complained once despite having to sleep squeezed in passageways and next to the motor.
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