GENEVA (AFP) - International agencies reacted with dismay to the latest tragedy to hit migrants trying to reach Europe, as a split emerged in the aid community over how to deal with the growing wave of migration across the Mediterranean Sea.
The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said they regretted the deaths of at least 22 people over the weekend when a boat carrying 75 would-be immigrants to Europe sank off the coast of Tunisia.
Forty-two people were missing after the vessel heading for Italy broke up about an hour after it left a Tunisian beach, authorities said.
"It's another regrettable example of the tragedy of irregular migration from sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa to the northern shores of the Mediterranean in Europe," said Jean-Philippe Chauzy, a spokesman for the IOM.
UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said: "Every one of these tragedies makes it more important that a comprehensive solution be found."
UNHCR data shows that asylum claims in Europe have declined considerably in the past two years.
But the number of people trying tho make the precarious crossing from North Africa to Italy or Spain appears to have increased, according to IOM.
Chauzy said about 8,000 people had arrived this year in the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa, the country's closest point to Africa, until mid-September, against 6,000 during the whole of 2002.
UNHCR expressed concern Monday at reports that hundreds of recent arrivals on Lampedusa were being flown back to Libya without proper assessment of asylum claims, and called for access to oversee the procedure.
Both Geneva-based agencies insisted that wealthy countries needed to do more to tackle irregular migration at its source, partly by fighting poverty in the African countries where the migrants came from.
But they appeared at odds over the controversial issue of transit centres or camps for migrants in north Africa, proposed by some countries including Britain and, last week, Germany.
On Friday the High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, told EU ministers that he was still sceptical about transit centres.
"At the moment there's perhaps a tendency to look for solutions that are too hasty and don't really address the complex problem," UNHCR official Marie-Helene Verney told AFP.
"We have no camps, we have no intention of having camps in north Africa," she added.
However, the IOM was evaluating the issue and Chauzy said that the agency favoured the idea of "migration processing centres" outside the EU as one part of a "holistic approach".
"In a way you could say that it could help save lives," Chauzy said.
Chauzy admitted that transit centres could open up a "pandora's box" on the issue, which mixes migration involving thousands of impoverished people seeking better livelihoods with the fate of asylum-seekers fleeing persecution.
UNHCR feared that transit centres could undermine the rights of individual asylum seekers by depriving them of access to EU territory or leading to their deportation while their claims are evaluated, Verney said.
IOM argued that centres in north African countries could help assess asylum claims and provide people with information about legal migration into Europe.
"Imagine a Malian, or Ghanaian or Ivorian, who is in Libya or elsewhere with little money and no options for return, and is stranded until he or she can follow up with the next step, one of the most dangerous, of crossing the Mediterranean," Chauzy said.
"These reception centres would help give stranded irregular migrants in the region the option to return home in dignity. It would de facto undercut the appeal of traffickers and smugglers," he added.
But Chauzy said the demand for immigrant labour in the EU should also be better organised to encourage legal channels for migration.