EU convenes emergency meeting in response to migrant boat tragedies

BRUSSELS, April 20 (UPI) -- The European Union convened an emergency meeting Monday in the aftermath of a deadly migrant boat tragedy in the Mediterranean over the weekend.

A boat carrying up to 700 migrants capsized in Libyan waters around midnight local time on Saturday with the death toll believed to be in the hundreds.

"After what happened in the Mediterranean the night before last I felt it was our moral duty to concentrate our responsibility, as Europeans, to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again and again," EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and EU Commission Vice President Federica Mogherini said Monday upon arriving at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels.

Although Mogherini acknowledged "there is no easy solution, no magic solution" to the migration issue, she reiterated that "we need to develop European policies and this is our common responsibility."

"The European Union was built and is built around the protection of human rights, human dignity and the life of human people. We need to be consistent in that; this is also our specific interest. I hope that from today and in the coming days we will be able to make sure that European policies are facing appropriately the situation."

The European Commission presented a 10-point plan which included fingerprinting all migrants, a rapid return for those not eligible for entry to European countries and a strengthening of search and rescue operations, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.

The meeting came as three other rescue missions were in progress, and a distress signal from a boat carrying 300 people was heard by the International Office for Migration (IOM) in Rome. The caller indicated a boat was sinking in the Mediterranean Sea, and at least 20 people aboard were killed. A second boat, traveling near the sinking boat, was still afloat.

Federico Soda of the IOM said resources to help the sinking boat were unavailable, adding, "The weekend incident has tied up a lot of resources. The (Italian) Coast Guard will probably try to redirect commercial ships to the area."

A joint ministerial meeting with both foreign and interior ministers has also been called to convene Monday afternoon. "We will tackle the issues strictly related to migration," Mogherini noted, and prepare for a possible extraordinary European Council later in the week.

The EU foreign ministers observed a minute of silence at the meeting in remembrance of the victims of boat tragedies, spokeswoman Maja Kocijančič posted on Twitter.

EU Council President Donald Tusk announced a summit meeting Thursday "to discuss what we can and must do to alleviate the situation."

Of the hundreds believed to be on board at the time the boat overturned Saturday, only 28 have been rescued. The coffins of 24 who died arrived in Malta on Monday, the Italian Coast Guard reported.