(Adds Foreign Minister's reaction)

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini is holding firm to his belief that a reduction in Malta's search and rescue area is "indispensible to the international community".

Reacting to Foreign Minister's Tonio Borg's statement that Malta's SAR is not for sale, Minister Frattini told Italian media "maybe, we gave a search and rescue area that is too large for tiny Malta".

He said that in spite of Dr Borg's clear no, Italy still believed that Malta's area, which was almost as large as the whole Italian territory and spanned from Tunisia to Crete, was massive for the country.

Dr Borg yesterday denied there have been negotiations with Italy to reduce Malta's SAR for the past 10 years. He was replying to a statement by Frattini that Italy would be pushing for an agreement on these negotiations by the end of the year.

Italian patrol boats already monitored the area between Libya, Malta and Italy and it was the Italians who had saved the most lives, Mr Frattini said.

However, there were international obligations besides rescue and Malta's SAR should be covered by Valletta.

Dr Borg said this afternoon that the SAT issue had nothing to do with the illegal migration incident earlier this week.

"Malta sticks to its position that the Maltese SAR area is not up for discussion," he said.