TRIPOLI, Aug 25 (AFP) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arrived in Syrte, 500 kilometres (310 miles) east of Tripoli on Wednesday to meet Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi for talks on ways of combatting illegal immigration, official sources said.
Berlusconi, who was met by his Libyan counterpart Shukri Ghanem, was due to meet Kadhafi for an informal dinner and talks due to focus mainly on a plan to stop waves of illegal immigrants using the North African state as a springboard for entry into Italy.
But Libya is insisting that progress also be made on a number of issues which have troubled relations between it and its former colonial oppressor, not least Tripoli's demands for reparations for more than three decades of occupation by Rome.
Berlusconi will be hoping to build on a bilateral accord signed in Tripoli in July last year between his Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu and Libyan Justice Minister Mohammad Mosrati.
But despite a brief respite following that agreement, the arrivals of illegal immigrants to Italy have increased again this summer, causing humanitarian, political and security problems.
The problem was emphasised on the eve of the meeting, when 275 illegals landed on the island of Lampedusa on Tuesday morning. A police source told AFP the boat people had departed from Libya.
"We have many questions to resolve together with Mr Kadhafi in a spirit of complete friendship," Berlusconi told reporters ahead of Wednesday's lightning visit.
"We will confront mainly the problem of immigration and the settlement of an old topic of disagreement that Libya wishes to resolve in a way showing that the past is behind us and a new season of complete friendship is beginning," he said.
According to Italian newspaper reports, Berlusconi is likely to press the Libyan leader to accept Rome's help in setting up "reception centres" in the Libyan desert.
As a result of the earlier accord, Italy and Libya will begin joint sea, air and land patrols on September 15.
The new "reception centres" would deal with requests for asylum in situ, effectively pushing back the immigration front-line.
The plan was unveiled by Pisanu and his German counterpart Otto Schily at a meeting in Tuscany earlier this month, though the planned centres have been criticised by the German Greens and human rights groups as a byword for "concentration camps in the desert".
Libya claims it is helpless in the face of overland immigration from the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, and that sanctions have deprived it of acquiring the basic means of patrolling its vast borders.
It claims it desperately needs border patrol vehicles, surveillance vessels and aircraft.