The Justice and Home Affairs Ministry is reviewing the situation in consultation with experts from the Foreign Affairs Ministry, he added.

Dr Frendo was answering questions by this newspaper on whether Italy had the right to request that Malta take the illegal immigrants back. “The Maltese government has an open channel of communication with the Italian authorities and is currently undergoing talks to iron out the situation,” he said.

Just 106 of the 200 illegal immigrants who were in difficulty on Friday agreed to be taken to shore by the AFM while the remaining 94, including 24 women, four of them pregnant, persisted in continuing their trip to Sicily and eventually landed in Pozzallo on Saturday morning. The illegal immigrants are said to be Eritrean, Ethiopian and Somali nationals.

Yesterday TMID reported Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu’s comments aired by Canale Cinque. Mr Pisanu reportedly said that the illegal immigrants who landed in Pozzallo were Malta’s responsibility.

Mr Pisanu is understood to have said that the AFM did not act correctly, adding that the Italian government will be exercising its right to send the immigrants back to Malta as the original EU point of entry. “We will send them back to Valletta,” Canale Cinque reported him saying.

Yesterday Italian Ambassador Alvise Memmo, confirmed with TMID that he has made the request verbally to the Maltese government.

However the government is holding its ground on the way the AFM handled the situation, saying that they acted in the best way possible in the circumstances. A statement issued yesterday by the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry said that the immigrants’ repeatedly refused to harbour the vessel in Malta, adding that the AFM recovered over 100 immigrants from the ship and kept the Italian authorities informed at all times, even when the immigrants decided to sail to Italy early on Saturday morning.

Furthermore, according to the agreement both countries had signed in December 2001, the Italian authorities would have the right to send back the immigrants if these had reached Italy after leaving from Maltese land or from the country’s internal waters – a bay or the harbour.

The statement did, however, qualify that the Italian request to send the immigrants back to Malta could be warranted by the international sea rescue legislation, adding that the matter is being evaluated.

In this connection, Minister Frendo confirmed that the Justice and Home Affairs Ministry was being given technical advice regarding international sea rescue law by experts from his ministry. “There is no team of experts working on the matter, the ministry is simply analysing the situation and establishing the facts. This is not a major incident, both sides are in an open dialogue to find a solution.”

“The government always said that the matter should be evaluated in the light of the pertinent international law on sea rescue,” the statement said, making reference to a press conference that Minister Tonio Borg held on Saturday.

“This means that if the Italian authorities prove that Malta was the nearest safe port when these illegal immigrants were in distress then Malta will uphold its international obligations as it has done in the past,” the statement said. “The same principle was applied in the issue with the Cap Anamur ship issue, when the immigrants were picked in a zone that was closer to Lampedusa and therefore the Italian government accepted their responsibility.”