French-Italian fight puts a deal helping migrants in peril

By BARBARA SURK
Associated Press

NICE, France (AP) — A deal for Europe to jointly help asylum-seekers was breaking apart in a bitter French-Italian feud over a ship floating in the Mediterranean, its passengers and crew desperate for land. The crew of the Ocean Viking had been trying to dock since Italy’s right-wing government refused to take in its passengers last month. The relatively liberal government of France said Thursday that it will take them but withdraw from a broader European Union mechanism for distributing migrants more evenly. The announcement fueled a broader rise in tensions between the otherwise-friendly neighbors. The fight appeared to end a deal approved in June to reduce the pressure on Mediterranean nations that receive most of the refugees, who tend to come from Africa, the Mideast, and South Asia.