Italy's political crisis on display in migrant boat battle

A Spanish humanitarian boat carrying 147 migrants rescued at sea was anchored in choppy waters Thursday near a southern Italian island while the country's interior and defense ministers sparred over whether it should dock amid Italy's rapidly escalating government crisis.

Spain and five other nations agreed to take the migrants that anti-migrant Interior Minister Matteo Salvini was refusing to allow into Italy, offering a solution to the two-week standoff between the charity rescue boat and the populist Italian government.

But the ad hoc offers by fellow European Union nations did little to calm the political turmoil pushing the 14-month-old government to the brink of collapse and toward possible early elections Salvini hopes will give him the premiership.

In an open letter to letter to Salvini posted on Facebook, Premier Giuseppe Conte accused his interior minister of "disloyal cooperation ... that I cannot accept."
"I confess myself of being obsessed" with fighting illegal migration, saying that's what "Italian citizens pay me for."
Trenta said she acted "listening to my conscience."