Italy is to set up a police post in the Albanian port of Vlore, with the aim of discouraging illegal migration across the Adriatic to the Italian coast, sixty miles away.

The decision was announced by the interior minister in the new Italian government, Rosa Russo Jervolino, during a visit to , Tirana.

She said the size of the police presence at Vlore had yet to be determined but both governments agreed it was easier to intervene on the ground than stop illegal migration at sea.

Hundreds of thousands of Albanians have fled their country, many in unseaworthy craft.

Last year, more than fifty illegal migrants were killed in a collision with an Italian warship.