Leaders of 9 European-Mediterranean countries meet in Malta as the migration crisis in the Mediterranean worsens, at a time when European Union interior ministers have made progress on new rules regarding the bloc’s dealings with asylum seekers and irregular migrants.
Leaders of 9 European countries overlooking the Mediterranean will meet on the island of Malta today, Friday, for talks scheduled to focus on irregular migration.
The leaders gathered included French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose hard-right government has clashed with both France and Germany at a time when it is pressuring other European Union countries to share the burden.
The summit comes after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced Thursday that more than 2,500 migrants have died or gone missing while trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe since the beginning of the year, a much larger number than in the same period in 2022.
It also comes at a time when European Union interior ministers finally made progress on Thursday regarding new rules related to how the bloc deals with asylum seekers and illegal immigrants, amid expectations of reaching an agreement in the coming days.
There is a new impetus to reach an agreement after a sharp rise in the number of migrants arriving on the small Italian island of Lampedusa earlier this month, with the number of arrivals this year exceeding 133,000 people.
Macron and Meloni had been seeking to ease tensions in recent days and met Tuesday in Rome on the sidelines of the official funeral of former Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.
A French presidential source said: “France and Italy share a common vision for managing the migration issue.”
The source stated that Paris hopes that the “Med 9” summit on Friday will provide a “clear message” that migration requires a response at the European level.
The European Union is preparing to approve a modified agreement on migration and asylum, aimed at relieving pressure on countries on the front line, such as Italy and Greece, by transferring some arrivals to other member states of the Union.
Both Meloni and Macron also want to avoid boat departures from North Africa, by working more closely with Tunisia, despite questions about that country's human rights standards and its treatment of migrants.
Azerbaijan arrests the former commander of the Karabakh forces on the Armenian border and 85,000 people flee
Moscow : The Russian TASS news agency reported on Friday, citing an informed source, that the Azerbaijani army arrested the former commander of the Armenian separatist forces in Nagorno-Karabakh at a border checkpoint with Armenia.
According to TASS, Commander Levon Mnatsakanyan commanded the army of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh from 2015 to 2018.
Nearly 90,000 Armenians have fled the separatist enclave, according to the United Nations, since Azerbaijan retook the mountainous region in a lightning military operation last week.
Following Azerbaijan's control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in the South Caucasus, about 85,000 people sought asylum in Armenia .
Armenian government spokeswoman Nazli Baghdasaryan said in the capital, Yerevan, on Friday that they were forced to leave their homes.
According to official, unconfirmed data, 120,000 Karabakh Armenians previously lived in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Azerbaijan took control of the region, which had been the subject of decades of dispute between the two countries, in a military attack last week.
The unrecognized Republic of Artsakh, which governs the Nagorno-Karabakh region, announced that it will disappear from existence beginning in early 2024, after the President of the Republic signed a decree to this effect yesterday morning, Thursday.
Azerbaijan forced the Republic of Artsakh to surrender last week, after short and intense fighting, which finally allowed Baku to assert its full sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Azerbaijani government and Russia - which is considered the protecting power of Armenia - announced that there was no need for citizens to flee. However, Karabakh Armenians fear persecution and violence from the Azerbaijani side.
There is also a religious dimension, as Armenians are Orthodox Christians, and Azerbaijan is Muslim.
In a recent context, at least 170 people were killed in a fuel warehouse explosion on Monday in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to what a new toll issued by the separatist authorities showed.
The Ministry of Interior in Nagorno-Karabakh said in a statement, “Human remains belonging to 170 people have been found so far and handed over to forensic services.”
Baku will allow UN experts to visit Karabakh “within days”
For its part, the office of a presidential advisor in Azerbaijan said on Friday that the country intends to allow a group of United Nations experts to visit the Karabakh region “within days.”
He added that the media has the opportunity to visit Karabakh as well.
The United States and others called on Baku to allow international observers into Karabakh amid concerns about possible human rights violations.
Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing in Karabakh, which Baku strongly denies.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had said that the rights of Karabakh Armenians would be fully respected, but his “iron fist” dispelled the idea of establishing an independent Armenian state in Karabakh.
A statement from the presidential office in Azerbaijan said that Aliyev told US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a phone call on Tuesday that his country’s forces only targeted “military installations during the implementation of anti-terrorism measures that lasted less than 24 hours, and no civilians were harmed.”