ITALY: President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi of Italy yesterday called for "a humanitarian spirit" to prevail "over all other considerations" in relation to Italy's latest boat people emergency, prompted by the arrival of 928 mainly Kurdish, illegal immigrants in Catania, Sicily, on Monday.
The president's words sounded like a sharp rebuke for the centre-right government's senior coalition partner, the federalist Northern League, whose leader, Senator Umberto Bossi, yesterday argued that the government was not taking a firm enough line on illegal immigration.
Mr Bossi wants all those sections of Italian military and police forces involved in policing Italy's notoriously leaky 7,600 km long coastline to be grouped into one single force, empowered to use tough measures in dealing with those criminal elements who organise the trafficking of boat people.
Furthermore, he has called for the introduction of measures enabling port police authorities to order the demolition of boats sequestered during boat people operations.
The vast majority of the 928 immigrants who disembarked in Catania were yesterday reported to be in reasonable health, notwithstanding a 19-day journey from Turkey via Cyprus and Lebanon during which they lived in mediaeval conditions in the hold below deck on the frail and rusting 80 metre merchant ship, the Monica.
Such was the condition of the boat on arrival in Catania that health workers and police forces work masks for fear of infection during the disembarkation.
By yesterday, however, only 18 of the immigrants had been hospitalised, suffering from dehydration and exhaustion. The remaining 910 immigrants were yesterday transferred by bus from Sicily to a reception camp at the military airport of Palese, near Bari in Puglia.
This move was rendered necessary by the sheer weight of numbers since the Palese camp, equipped with caravans for sleeping and two large central eating and living areas, can cope with over 1,000 people.
Once settled in the reception camp, the immigrants will be subjected to an identification process which will result in nearly all of them being declared illegal and being ordered to leave the country within 15 days.
Many of the immigrants, however, who paid $4,000 dollars per head for their transit, may well choose to ignore the order and try to slip out of the camp, making their way to northern Italy or northern Europe.
New legislation, promoted by the current centre-right government and aimed at blocking this legal loophole by empowering police authorities to order an immediate repatriation, is currently going through parliament.
In the meantime, the Italian government has reacted to the Catania landings by declaring a temporary state of emergency that enables local authorities to requisition public buildings while increasing funding for the construction of temporary and long term reception centres.
Even as these measures were being enacted, however, coastal authorities were bracing themselves for further "cargoes" of boat people.
Information gathered by Italian intelligence services suggests that as many as 50,000 Asian illegal immigrants could be headed for Italy in the next few weeks.