North African and European leaders will set up an immigration task force following the Arab Spring uprisings, which have seen a sharp rise in people making risky boat crossings to seek a new life in Europe. "We cannot accept that hundreds of people are dying in the Mediterranean," Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki said Saturday at a summit bringing together the leaders of five European countries -- France, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain -- and five Maghreb states -- Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia. "This was the first meeting of this kind in nine years, held in a historic context of deep transformations," said Maltese Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi. The leaders adopted a declaration hailing the region's "great shared heritage of culture, civilisation and history" and the goals of "democracy, stability, security and prosperity". They broached the sensitive subject of the thousands of people who migrate to the north, often risking their lives in rickety boats crossing the Mediterranean. Marzouki announced a task force aimed at discouraging this migration, notably by better coordinating maritime resources. "There are Tunisian, Libyan children, sometimes very young kids who die in shipwrecks. Each shipwreck is a catastrophe ... and cannot be accepted," Marzouki told journalists at the press conference closing the talks. The speaker of the Libyan parliament, Mohamed Yousef el-Magarief, said the summit was "no doubt ... (a) right step in the right direction in creating better understanding and stronger cooperation between countries".
