Giorgia Meloni: Italy's new PM takes aim at migrant boats in debut speech

Italy's new far-right leader, Giorgia Meloni, has used her maiden speech to MPs to stress her aim to halt migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean.

"We must stop illegal departures and human trafficking," she said, repeating a campaign pledge to stop boats heading to Italy from North Africa.

For years Italy has been a hub for irregular migrants heading for Europe.

More than 77,000 have made the highly dangerous crossing to Italy this year, putting pressure on local communities.

Ms Meloni, 45, leads the Brothers of Italy party and has come to power at the head of a right-wing coalition.

"We do not intend in any way to question the right of asylum for those fleeing wars and persecutions," she told the lower house of parliament. "All we want to do in relation to immigration is to stop the people traffickers from having the choice of deciding who enters Italy."

She said she felt the weight of being her country's first female leader and used the English word "underdog" to describe herself, paying tribute to a broad range of Italian women who had gone before her to "break this ultimate glass ceiling".

She was greeted with a standing ovation and cries of "Giorgia, Giorgia".

The Meloni government was only sworn in on Saturday and already it has returned to a theme pursued by one of its parties, the far-right League, in 2018-19.

Shortly before the prime minister spoke, the new Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, threatened to close ports to two rescue boats carrying hundreds of migrants, arguing that the Ocean Viking and Humanity1 were failing to follow rules.

Mr Piantedosi played a key role in the earlier policy of preventing rescue boats carrying migrants from docking in Italian ports. That eventually led to the leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, going on trial accused of kidnapping and preventing the rescue boat Open Arms carrying 147 migrants from docking in Sicily in 2019.

Meanwhile, migrant hotline Alarm Phone warned on Tuesday that some 1,350 people including women and children were in distress on two boats that had left the Libyan port of Tobruk and were now adrift in the Strait of Sicily. It said two babies had died after the boat they were in left Tunisia before those on board were picked up by the Italian coast guard.

A spokeswoman for SOS Humanity, the group behind Humanity1, told the BBC they had not yet been given any details of the Rome government's new policy but stressed that under the law of the sea closing ports was against international law when people were rescued in distress.