National police chiefs from seven European Union countries plus Turkey are due to meet in Rome later today to try to work out new ways of preventing refugees from poverty in the developing world from entering the European Union. Meanwhile, more Kurds arrived by boat from Turkey and Albania along Italy's southern coast. Our Rome correspondent David Willey reports:

Italy's organising this top level meeting of police chiefs from the countries which agreed at Schengen to open their internal borders. The Schengen system has a weak link -- Italy -- which is unable to police its long coastline effectively.

Italy has also decided to adopt a controversial policy of welcoming Kurdish refugees who are arriving here in ever increasing numbers. Italy is even offering them the chance to apply for political asylum.

This poses a serious problem for countries like Germany, which already have sizeable Kurdish communities. The new arrivals from Turkey wanted to join their relations and friends in northern Europe.

But France and Germany are telling Italy that under new rules agreed by EU members, it's up to the country where the refugees first arrived to repatriate them. Turkey has promised to co-operate with EU members by preventing Kurds from migrating to the EU, but there are shadowy links between the Turkish authorities and the criminal gangs who run the lucrative traffic in poor immigrants across the Mediterranean.

Kurdish separatists even accuse the Turkish government of encouraging Kurds to migrate to Europe as a reprisal for having its formal application for membership of the EU rejected last month. As well as incurring criticism from fellow EU members, Italy has drawn praise from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees for its humanitarian policy towards Kurdish refugees.