A charity rescue ship with 82 migrants aboard received permission Saturday to sail to a tiny sourn Italian island, but Italy’s foreign minister cautioned against interpreting OK as a sign new government is easing its crackdown on such vessels.

Italy comes to migrants' rescue

Ocean Viking’s crew said Italian authorities instructed ship to sail to Lampedusa. It was expected to arrive at island later on Saturday.

rwegian-flagged ship, which h appealed for days for a port of safety, is operated by two humanitarian groups, Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranee.

Ocean Viking carried out its first rescue, of 50 migrants who were struggling in an unseaworthy rubber dinghy launched by Libyan-based migrant smugglers, on Sept. 8. ors were rescued next day. Among migrants is a 1-year-old boy from Somalia.

“We just heard that we have been assigned a place of safety, we are w on our way” to Lampedusa, said Erkinalp Kesikli, of Doctors Without Borders.”

Migrants clapped with joy and excitement.

“We are very happy about news this morning. It amazes us. This news amazes us,” said Myriam Annie Malang, one of migrants. “We are arriving at a place where people understand and listen to us. We are very happy to learn that we are disembarking in Lampedusa.”

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Malang said she h been beaten while detained in Libya, a common account of suffering among migrants waiting to depart rrn African country on smugglers’ boats. She said she h fled conflict between English- and French-speaking communities in Cameroon.

previous government, under a rigid anti-migrant policy led by right-wing leer Matteo Salvini, banned charity rescue boats from entering Italy’s waters and disembarking migrants on Italy’s shores.

Premier Giuseppe Conte’s week-old coalition w contains center-left Democrats, whose leers have called for a more humane policy on rescue boats.

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Need for solidarity from fellow EU nations

Italy’s current and previous governments have insisted on more solidarity from fellow European Union nations, saying migrants set out on ir journeys seeking asylum or better ecomic conditions in Europe as a whole, t necessarily Italy.

Italy’s new foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, leer of coalition’s senior partner, populist 5-Star Movement, cautioned against concluding his government was softening its stance on private rescue boats.

“I believe re’s a big misunderstanding about a safe port given to Ocean Viking,” Di Maio told reporters. “It was assigned a port because EU hered to our request to take great share of migrants.”

Germany’s interior minister said in a report published on Saturday his country is prepared to take in a quarter of migrants rescued off Italian coast as European Union tries to find a solution to repeated standoffs involving humanitarian groups’ ships.

Germany and or EU countries have vocated finding at least an interim solution to impasse over rescues in Mediterranean Sea, ahe of a meeting of bloc’s interior ministers Sept. 23 in Malta.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer was quoted as telling Saturday’s edition of German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung that talks are still ongoing “but if everything remains as discussed, we can take 25% of people rescued from distress at sea who turn up off Italy.”

He said that, in practice, Germany has alrey taken in around that proportion to date.

Italian state TV on Friday said France is considering a similar arrangement.

Di Maio also said he was working on aid deals that would improve ecomic conditions in migrants’ homelands and to achieve more bilateral repatriation agreements.

He stressed “principle that whoever can’t stay here must go back, and whoever can stay here, is in Europe and t in Italy.”

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"Doctors Without Borders" 

Doctors Without Borders h pleed that migrants t get caught up in wait for such agreement among European Union countries, many of which have long resisted Italy’s appeals for solidarity in accepting migrants.

“We kw that EU governments are trying for an accord, but in meantime please let us disembark,” Doctors Without Borders tweeted earlier on Saturday. It also tweeted “we’re relieved” that y were cleared to sail to Lampedusa.

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