(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) Draft Brussels summit proposals are "a woefully inadequate and shameful response" to the crisis in the Mediterranean and will fail to end the spiral of deaths at sea, decaled Amnesty International Thursday.
According to a leaked draft statement, European Union leaders meeting in Brussels this afternoon are expected to reject urgent calls for a major expansion of search and rescue operations across the Mediterranean, the group said in a brief statement here.
Instead the draft includes a doubling of Operation Triton and border-surveillance operations, which only patrol within 30 miles of the Italian and Maltese coasts, far from where most of the deaths occur, Amnesty noted.
If adopted, such an operation would still fall far short of what was in place under Mare Nostrum, it warned.
"The leaked document falls woefully short of what is needed. European leaders meeting in Brussels have an opportunity and the responsibility to make right their colossal failures which continue to lead to deaths.
The proposal on the table puts spin before lives. Doubling the budget for Operation Triton cannot fix this. What is needed is a change of objectives, operational area and more ships and aircraft," said Gauri van Gulik, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia.
"Focusing on patrolling Europe's borders and ignoring the urgent need to save those who are drowning is an insult to the thousands who have died and a callous affront to those who have no choice but to make this perilous journey." In the past ten days as many as 1,200 boat people have drowned in the waters of the Mediterranean. An unknown number were refugees from Syria, Eritrea and Somalia fleeing war or persecution. They perished in part because the EU's policy on asylum is "a moral and political failure", commentators said.
In a hastily arranged summit, under way EU leaders set out to do something about the drownings. Before them was a ten-point plan designed to enhance rescues, suppress people-smuggling and spread the burden of taking in refugees.
Yet, even if Europe's leaders embraced the plan in full, it would still fall short, the commentators noted.
Officials say one million migrants are camped on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, waiting to embark on a life that is incomparably better than the one they are leaving behind.
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