Rome: Italy's hardline interior minister, who recently sparked a multinational showdown by refusing entry to a Mediterranean Sea rescue boat packed with 630 migrants, is now taking aim at Italy's minority Roma community.

Matteo Salvini told a Lombardy television station on Monday that he wants to conduct a census or "registry" of Roma, also known as Gypsies, in Italy. Salvini, the leader of Italy's right-wing League party, insisted later the project's purpose wasn't to identify individual Roma.

"I've asked the ministry to prepare a dossier on the Roma question in Italy," he told TeleLombardia, adding that the current situation of Roma was "chaos" several years after a crackdown.

Italy has a sizeable Roma community that includes people originally from Romania and the former Yugoslavia. Authorities periodically clear out the squatter camps where many live on the outskirts of big cities.