Brussels - The interior ministers of Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta on Thursday called on their European Union colleagues to help them deal with the constant influx of immigrants arriving in the Mediterranean from Asia and North Africa.

At a meeting in Brussels, the ministers said they wanted asylum-seekers to be distributed among a greater number of EU member states.

Diplomats said ministers had also called for more deals with third countries allowing illegal aliens to be returned to their country of origin, and more money to be allocated to Frontex, the EU's underfunded borders control agency.

The four Southern European nations are particularly exposed to the arrival of immigrants due to their proximity to North Africa.

Italy, for instance, has had to build a second reception centre on the tiny Sicilian island of Lampedusa to cope with the numbers.

The Cypriot interior minister, Neoklis Sylikiotis, said his country had received 3,500 asylum applications in a year.

"This is the equivalent of 300-400,000 applications for a country of 40 million inhabitants," Sylikiotis said.

With this in mind, ministers were also discussing the creation of an Asylum Support Office.

Such an institution would facilitate exchanges of information, share experiences and develop concrete cooperation between national asylum offices. It would also help deal with asylum-seekers who file multiple applications in several EU countries in order to improve their chances of success.

The EU began setting up common rules on asylum-seekers as long ago as 2004, but officials complain that there are still immense differences between member states in the way the laws are applied.

According to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, some 100,000 people sought asylum in the EU in the first half of 2008. The highest numbers were in France (15,500), Britain
(14,500) and Sweden (12,000).

Of the applicants, some 14,000 came from Iraq, just over 8,000 came from the Russian Federation, 6,000 came from Somalia and 5,700 came from Pakistan.

But according to European Commission figures, Iraqis seeking asylum in Europe can face anything from a 2-per-cent chance of acceptance to a 71-per-cent chance, depending on the country in which they apply. People fleeing areas such as Chechnya and Somalia face similar problems.

Several ministers Thursday backed Malta's request to host such an office. (dpa)