Malta, Italy, Greece urge EU for more aid on migration exodus from North Africa

Speaking at the end of a day’s conference in Cyprus, Maltese hote affairs minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici stressed that "This is not just a national problem but it is a European problem and it is a European problem which needs European instruments to solve."

Some 26,000 illegal migrants have taken boats across the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa and another 1,000 have fled to Malta.

"We, the Mediterranean member states, which are on the front line and receive disproportionate pressure from the increasing, mixed migratory flows, shouldn't be left alone to deal with these challenges — and we cannot," Cypriot Interior Ministry Neoklis Sylikiotis told reporters after talks with officials from Spain, Italy, Greece and Malta.

Sylikiotis said the EU must be more specific on how it can help.

Italy's undersecretary to the Interior Ministry Alfredo Mantovano said his country has received some 30,000 migrants from Tunisia and 8,000 more from Libya over the last three months.

"This burden must be shared as much as possible throughout the European Union," Mantovano said.

The Cypriot minister said Mediterranean EU member states want to see the bloc set up a special, humanitarian emergency "solidarity fund" to help them deal with future migrant and asylum seeker inflows.

He also said they want swift agreement with the EU's border control agency Frontex on a common coastline patrol system stretching across the Mediterranean. They are also urging speedier negotiations on repatriation agreements with countries from which migrants originate and want the EU to adopt a common migration and asylum policy by 2012.

Greece's Public Order Minister Christos Papoutsis said the EU needs to refocus on forging a development strategy for the Mediterranean that would create jobs, protect the environment and provide stability in the region.