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Tripoli, 23 June 2013:
Reports of massive numbers of illegal immigrants are crossing the country’s southern borders and heading to the coast . . .[restrict]and Europe are an exaggeration, the Prime Minister said today.
Speaking at a press conference following his meeting with the Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Ali Zeidan said that people were crossing “in their tens”, not in their hundreds or more.
He had been in the south in recent days, he said, and had seen for himself the procedures put in place to reduce illegal migration. People were getting though, he agreed. Given such a vast expanse of territory, it was inevitable.. “We can’t throw them out” in the circumstances, he said.
Nonetheless, there would be further measures. “A budget has been allocated and will be adopted by Congress in the coming days,” he added.
On Friday, Zeidan was in the southern town of Ghat, on the border with Algeria, at the head of a government delegation that included the Ministers of the Interior, Local Government, Agriculture and Planning as well as the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Tourism aimed at assessing first hand the problems in the area.
Countries on the northern side of the Mediterranean also had to help reduce illegal migration, he said. [/restrict]
