Gadhafi accused of using refugees

ROME, April 20 (UPI) -- Italy's foreign minister said Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi might be playing games with the international community when it comes to refugees.

Franco Frattini told a panel of the Italian Parliament that Gadhafi may have decided to use people trafficking to hit back at international support for the Libyan rebels, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

He said he will ask the anti-Gadhafi Libyan National Council whether "the Gadhafi regime was starting to organize the trafficking of human beings, as it had threatened to do."

Gadhafi has said in the past that Africans will move in mass to Europe, and the Mediterranean will become a "sea of chaos" if he is toppled.

Tuesday a fishing boat containing some 760 African refugees made the hazardous crossing of the Channel of Sicily to the tiny southern Italian island of Lampedusa.