Italy's immigrant evacuations spark dissension

(ROME) - Italy began transferring thousands of African migrants from a Mediterranean island Thursday amid bitter government infighting and charges that Europe was failing to help Rome deal with a refugee crisis.

After weeks of protests from residents on Lampedusa and fierce condemnation from aid organisations over living conditions on the overcrowded island, more than a thousand migrants set sail for a reception centre on the mainland.

A "Free Lampedusa" plan launched by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to clear the tiny southern island of refugees was welcomed by cheering locals on Wednesday.

But his news that the immigrants would be shipped to the makeshift Manduria camp in the southern region of Puglia provoked outrage.

Italy's deputy interior minister Alfredo Mantovano and local mayor Paolo Tommasino, both members of Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party, resigned in protest.

Though overshadowed by the chaotic situation on Lampedusa in recent weeks, the tent camp in Puglia has sparked protests from locals residents tired of the large numbers of immigrants who have managed to escape the centre.

Mantovano had promised on Monday that the camp would not hold more than 1,500 people and swiftly resigned when he discovered the prime minister was sending over a thousand immigrants to the Puglia site.

"After having read in the newspapers that Berlusconi had announced the arrival of 1,400 immigrants, it seemed like the only thing to do," Mantovano told Italian media.

Manduria, 35 kilometres (22 miles) east of the city of Taranto, has a population of just 30,000.

A plan for the regions to take in immigrants evacuated from Lampedusa has been the subject of bitter infighting between the government and local authorities.

By mid-morning Thursday, over 2,500 people had been evacuated from Lampedusa and were heading to mainland Italy by sea and air.

As well as doubling the number of places at the Manduria camp to 3,000, Berlusconi's taskforce announced plans for a further 1,300 places at Trapani and Caltanissetta in Sicily and 500 at Potenza in the Basilicata region.

Around 500 immigrants are also destined for Coltano, a former radar station near Pisa in Tuscany, despite vocal criticism over Interior Ministor Roberto Maroni's "dangerous" initiative to put large numbers of people into single camps.

"It's a mistake," head of the staunchly left-wing Tuscan region Enrico Rossi said, echoing concern voiced by several opposition members over the plans orchestrated by Maroni, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League party.

"Maroni seems to have made his mind up and is going his own way, without even taking into consideration our idea to distribute these people throughout Tuscany," Rossi said.

Italy renewed its appeal to the European Union on Thursday for help dealing not just with Tunisian migrants looking for a better life, but also with refugees from other parts of Africa formerly held in detention camps in Libya.

"The immigrants already in Italy should be repatriated to Tunisia or distributed throughout Europe. There is a shocking lack of solidarity," Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in an interview with Channel Five television.

The European Commission on Wednesday said Italy should deal with the economic migrants washing up on its shores, the majority of whom are Tunisian.

But since the conflict in Libya began in mid-February, Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis have also begun turning up on Lampedusa and other islands in the Pelagian archipelago, which lies closer to north Africa than to mainland Italy.

Italians fear hundreds of thousands of migrants could depart for Italy's shores if Kadhafi's regime falls, given the Libyan leader's threats to send "millions" to Europe.

As another 500 immigrants were towed into Lampedusa port on Wednesday, Berlusconi visited the island to reassure increasingly weary residents that the migrant crisis would shortly be resolved.

After a string of protests over government inaction, the flamboyant premier quipped that Rome would "propose Lampedusa for the Nobel Peace Prize."

The billionaire media tycoon also promised a new golf course on the island, whose main industry is tourism, and announced that he had bought a house on Lampedusa via the Internet.