Earlier on Thursday, the Dutch-flagged German ship Lifeline, owned by the charity of the same name, was refused entry to Rome's ports as the debate over the current migrant crisis in the EU raged on.

Spain had been in contact with Malta to offer humanitarian help with the ship, carrying more than 200 rescued migrants.

However, Italy revealed Malta had refused their request take in the Mission Lifeline ship, a government spokeswoman said on Friday.

It comes just one day after Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the vessel should take the mirgants to The Netherlands.

Their calls follow the country's new coaltion government applying pressure on European partners to shoulder more of the burden of immigration from North Africa. </s> A rescue boat stranded for nearly a week in the Mediterranean with over 200 migrants docked in Malta Wednesday, after a deal was struck between a group of EU states to take them in.

Lifeline, a vessel for the German charity Mission Lifeline, has been waiting to be allocated a port for six days after rescuing 234 migrants off the coast of Libya last Thursday.

The migrants on board will be distributed among eight EU nations who have agreed to take them in, Maltese Prime minister Joseph Muscat said Wednesday.

So far Malta, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium and France have agreed to welcome some of the migrants.

Muscat said that after the migrants had disembarked, the Lifeline ship would be impounded in order to carry out an investigation into its legal status and actions on the night of the rescue.

However, Muscat warned that the situation was "unique" and could not be considered a blueprint for handling future rescues.

Mission Lifeline has come under fire from EU leaders who accuse it of contravening international law by rescuing the migrants when the Libyan coastguard was already intervening.

Belgium and Luxembourg said they would each take 15 of the Lifeline migrants. The Netherlands will take 20.

Theo Francken, Belgian minster for asylum and migration, tweeted that Belgium would help Malta but that it must be one-off operation.

Many passengers were suffering from seasickness and three were in the ship's hospital facility, according to Lifeline. One passenger has been evacuated, leaving 233 currently on board.

The eight EU nations agreed to take in a share of those on board after days of bickering over the migrants' fate.

The NGO's co-founder Axel Steier blamed Germany's failure to participate in the deal on the country's hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.

Seehofer has taken a strong stance on immigration and given German Chancellor Angela Merkel an ultimatum to curb arrivals to Germany.

Mission Lifeline has hit back at criticism levelled at it by EU leaders.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the charity had contravened "all the rules" by rescuing the migrants when the Libya coastguard was already intervening.

Macron accused Mission Lifeline of "playing into the hands of smugglers".

But the charity denied breaking the law in a statement on Wednesday.

"There have been a number of false accusations that Lifeline ignores orders by different MRCCs (maritime rescue coordination centres)," said Steier.

Lifeline argued the migrants would not be safe in Libya, where they have faced abuse and rape in holding centres, and that returning them there would breach international refugee law.

"The only order the ship denied was to hand over people to the so-called Libyan coastguard, as this would have been not in line with the Geneva Refugee Convention and therefore criminal."

The vessel's fate had been hanging in the balance since last week as bloc members remained at loggerheads over how to handle the influx of people trying to reach the continent.

Malta and Italy initially refused to take in the migrants, but on Tuesday Valletta agreed to let the ship dock when other EU states confirmed they would help.

Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini had hailed the news that a second migrant ship he had turned away was being taken in elsewhere.

Earlier this month, Rome rejected the Aquarius ship carrying 630 migrants, forcing it to eventually dock in Spain.

"For women and children really fleeing the war the doors are open, for everyone else they are not!" Salvini tweeted.

The decision by Italy's new hardline government to turn away rescue vessels has plunged Europe into a political crisis over how to collectively handle the huge numbers of people migrating from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Italy and Malta say they are unfairly bearing the brunt of the new arrivals, while other European countries are urging more forceful policies to block their entry.

Sixteen EU leaders held emergency talks in Brussels on Sunday in a bid to break the longstanding deadlock over who should take in the migrants.

A full EU summit is scheduled for Thursday and Friday. </s> Rome, June 22 - The Italian port authority on Friday made a formal request for Malta to allow the NGO-run migrant-rescue ship Lifeline to dock at a port on the island, government sources said. The Dutch-flagged ship, run by German NGO Mission Lifeline, may be set to be at the centre of an international wrangle like that which involved another migrant-rescue vessel, the Aquarius, which ended up docking in Valencia last week after Italy and Malta refused it access to ports. Italian Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli on Thursday accused the Lifeline of "operating in Libyan waters outside all rules, outside international law" after it took on 224 asylum seekers. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the Lifeline should go to the Netherlands. </s> Rome, June 22 - The Italian port authority on Friday made a formal request for Malta to allow the NGO-run migrant-rescue ship Lifeline to dock at a port on the Mediterranean island, government sources said. The Dutch-flagged ship, run by German NGO Mission Lifeline, may be set to be at the centre of an international wrangle like that which involved another NGO-run migrant-rescue vessel, the Aquarius, which ended up docking in Valencia last week after Italy and Malta refused it access to ports. Italian Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli on Thursday accused the Lifeline of "operating in Libyan waters outside all rules, outside international law" after it took on 224 asylum seekers. He called on Malta to meet Italy's request and warned that the vessel would be impounded if it does not go to Malta. "If the Lifeline NGO ship does not go to the port of Malta, which it should and must do out of a sense of humanity and out of respect for the law of the sea, it will be sequestered at once," Toninelli told Tgcom24. "As an Italian citizen, as the minister of infrastructure and transport, and as a European citizen, I would be shocked at the inhumanity of Malta if it did not receive the ship. "Malta is currently the nearest and safest port". Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Thursday that the Lifeline should go to the Netherlands. The Netherlands denied reports that the Lifeline and another NGO-run migrant-rescue ship, the Seefuchs, are sailing under Dutch flags. However, on Friday Mission Lifeline said in a tweet that its ship has been registered in the Netherlands since September 2017, attaching a photograph of a registration document. It also said Thursday's rescue operation took place in international waters. Salvini said for "the safety of the crew and passengers" Italy had asked Malta to open its ports. "It is clear that the ship will then have to be impounded and the crew members arrested. No more trafficking by sea," he added. Salvini, who is also deputy premier and League leader, has spearheaded the tough stance on migrants and NGOs operating humanitarian missions in the Mediterranean of the new League/5-Star Movement (M5S) government. </s> Rome, June 22 - Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli on Friday called on Malta to meet Italy's request for it to allow the NGO-run ship Lifeline to dock on the Mediterranean island after it rescued over 200 asylum seekers at sea. He also warned that the vessel would be impounded if it does not go to Malta. "If the Lifeline NGO ship does not go to the port of Malta, which it should and must do out of a sense of humanity and out of respect for the law of the sea, it will be sequestered at once," Toninelli told Tgcom24. "As an Italian citizen, as the minister of infrastructure and transport, and as a European citizen, I would be shocked at the inhumanity of Malta if it did not receive the ship. "Malta is currently the nearest and safest port". </s> The German captain of a private ship that rescues migrants in the Mediterranean Sea pleaded innocent on Monday to charges that he entered Malta's waters illegally and without proper boat registration.

At an arraignment hearing in the island nation's capital, Valletta, Maltese prosecutors asked a magistrate to order the confiscation of the vessel Lifeline. The boat's crew picked up 234 migrants in waters off Libya last month.

The destination of the rescued passengers became the subject of a dispute among European nations. Malta last week gave the ship safe harbor, but only after Italy and seven other nations agreed to each take some of the migrants.

Several hundred thousand migrants have arrived in Italy after sea rescue in recent years, and its new government refused to let the Lifeline dock. Maltese officials also launched an investigation to determine if the ship's crew violated maritime laws.

"We did the right thing," Lifeline Captain Claus-Peter Reisch after the arraignment, where his bail was set at 10,000 euros ($11,600) and he was ordered to surrender his passport and to report to a police station weekly.

The 57-year-old German was charged with using the boat in Maltese waters without proper registration or license. That charge also incorporates the allegation of entering Maltese waters illegally.

Defense lawyer Cedric Mifsud told reporters this his client and Lifeline appeared to be a "scapegoat" for a wider squabbling by European Union countries over how to manage the flood of migrants to Europe's southern shores.

"What we hope is that this case is not a symptom of the current Mediterranean climate, where governments are closing the EU's borders and targeting rescue NGOs for doing the jobs that governments should be doing," Mifsud said.

As for Malta, he added: "we suspect the Maltese government is picking on the Lifeline incident to make a political statement at (the) Brussels level, that borders need to be closed and that Europe will not tolerate NGOs rescuing refugees out at sea."

Some members of Lifeline's crew turned up at the court wearing T-shirts bearing the word "Save Lives." A white sheet emblazoned with the phrase, "Rescue ships blocked 400 dead" was held outside the courthouse.

The phrase apparently referred to the many migrants who are believed to have drowned in recent days off Libya. Italy and its EU partners say the Libyan coast guard should carry out rescues in its search-and-rescue area. Private aid groups have contended lives were lost because their rescue boat ships either aren't at sea, due to legal woes, like that of the Lifeline, or because Italy's coast guard says those rescues are Libya's responsibility.

The Libyan coast guard itself, already given training and equipment from Italy, says it needs more aid to properly save lives.

Italy's interior minister, Matteo Salvini, deputy premier in the government, leads an anti-migrant party. Many in his base associate migrants with crime. He has vowed to let no more aid groups' rescue vessels dock in Italy. </s> A German NGO rescue vessel that has spent six days stuck at sea after no nearby European country would give it permission to dock has been granted permission to disembark in Malta after a group of European Union member states agreed to take in the roughly 230 passengers, the Maltese prime minister said Wednesday.

The Lifeline had been refused entry by the governments of Italy and Malta, and its predominately Sub-Saharan passengers, who were rescued from flimsy boats trying to make their way across the Mediterranean Sea, were stuck on board amid worsening weather conditions that prompted the NGO to request permission to enter Maltese waters to take shelter. </s> Earlier on Thursday, the Dutch-flagged German ship Lifeline, owned by the charity of the same name, was refused entry to Rome’s ports as the debate over the current migrant crisis in the EU raged on.

Spain had been in contact with Malta to offer humanitarian help with a ship carrying more than 200 rescued immigrants which Italy asked the island state to take in, the government spokeswoman said on Friday.

On Friday Italy urged Malta to take in a ship carrying more than 200 rescued migrants. </s> Rome, June 22 - The Italian port authority on Friday made a formal request for Malta to allow the NGO-run migrant-rescue ship Lifeline to dock at a port on the Mediterranean island, government sources said. The Dutch-flagged ship, run by German NGO Mission Lifeline, may be set to be at the centre of an international wrangle like that which involved another NGO-run migrant-rescue vessel, the Aquarius, which ended up docking in Valencia last week after Italy and Malta refused it access to ports. Italian Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli on Thursday accused the Lifeline of "operating in Libyan waters outside all rules, outside international law" after it took on 224 asylum seekers. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said the Lifeline should go to the Netherlands. On Thursday the Netherlands denied reports that the Lifeline and another NGO-run migrant-rescue ship, the Seefuchs, are sailing under Dutch flags. However, on Friday Mission Lifeline said in a tweet that its ship has been registered in the Netherlands since September 2017, attaching a photograph of a registration document. It also said Thursday's rescue operation took place in international waters. Salvini said for "the safety of the crew and passengers" Italy had asked Malta to open its ports. "It is clear that the ship will then have to be impounded and the crew members arrested. No more trafficking by sea," he added. Salvini, who is also deputy premier and League leader, has spearheaded the tough stance on migrants and NGOs operating humanitarian missions in the Mediterranean of the new League/5-Star Movement (M5S) government.
Politicians from Germany, Spain, and Portugal visit MV Lifeline amid negotiations for the ship to dock in Malta or Italy, both of which have refused permission.