ROME, July 9 (Xinhua) -- Italy's government appeared to be at odds over migration as key ministers publicly contradicted one another on Monday.
The quarrel began on Sunday, when far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who also serves as deputy prime minister, said he would request that ships from European Union (EU) missions be blocked from Italian ports.
He promised to do so at a summit of EU interior ministers to be held in the Austrian city of Innsbruck Thursday.
"Unfortunately Italy's governments of the past 5 years signed agreements allowing all those ships to unload the immigrants in Italy," tweeted Salvini, who leads the euroskeptic League party.
This prompted Defense Minister Elisabetta Trenta to reply that it is not up to the interior minister to decide on such matters but the foreign ministry and the ministry of defense.
Italy's other deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio of the populist Five Star Movement, took to the airwaves to explain the squabble.
"The mission is European but the ports (of arrival) are all Italian," Di Maio told public broadcaster RAI's Radio 1 on Monday.
"Our objective is to change the rules of engagement of these missions, and especially of EUNAVFOR MED."
The EU launched EUNAVFOR MED -- European Naval Force Mediterranean -- in 2015 to combat migrant smuggling and oil trafficking in the Mediterranean.
The mission, which is currently under Italian command, was nicknamed Operation Sophia after a baby was born aboard a German vessel to a Somali woman, who was rescued at sea along with 453 other migrants and taken to Italy.
Di Maio went on to accuse the previous center-left government of "bartering" migrant arrivals for EU budget flexibility.
However, soon after the interview, ANSA news agency cited Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi as saying, "We will not back out of our international commitments... and we do not intend to make any moves outside the framework of international law, and therefore also of European law."
From the opposition, former center-left premier Paolo Gentiloni, who is now a member of the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Italy's parliament, tweeted: "Sophia's choice (sic). We are proud to lead a European naval mission against traffickers and for security in the Mediterranean."
The European Council last year voted to extend Operation Sophia until December 31, 2018.
