Diplomats discuss Italy’s threat to bar EU naval ships with migrants from its ports

Italy has threatened to bar ships of the EU naval force from bringing migrants picked up in the Mediterranean to its ports, officials in Brussels said. The government in Rome wants the bloc to come up with ways to share the burden of taking them in. Diplomats were meeting in Brussels on Tuesday over the latest migration threat from Italy, whose new government has already kept several rescue ships with hundreds of migrants on board stuck at sea for days. According to officials, Rome gave the EU until the end of August to come up with a clear relocation scheme for migrants picked up from the sea by ships from the Operation Sophia joint naval force, or it will no longer allow them into its ports, Reuters reports.