(ANSA) - Rome, June 26 - Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Wednesday that he was ready to use the police to stop the Sea-Watch 3 from entering the port of Lampedusa. "So the commander has decided to enter Lampedusa. She should know that the authorization to disembark has not been given," said Salvini, who has spearheaded the government's tough stance of refusing access to NGO-run search-and-rescue ships to Italy's ports.

"I'll line up the police. The right to defend our borders is sacred".

After he spoke Italian tax police launches left the port of Lampedusa to stop the Sea-Watch 3 ship docking to disembark 42 migrants two weeks after they were rescued off Libya.

"I have decided to enter into the port of Lampedusa," said the ship's captain, Carola Rackete. "I know what I'm risking but the 42 rescued migrants on board are at the end of their tether. "I'm taking them to safety". German NGO Sea-Watch complained that "no political or juridical solution has been possible, Europe has abandoned us.

"Our captain has no choice". "That's enough, we're going in. Not for provocation but for necessity, for responsibility," said the German NGO. The migrants are "desperate" after the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday rejected their appeal to be allowed to land at Lampedusa. League leader Salvini has said migrants on the Dutch-flagged ship run by a German NGO run should go to Amsterdam or Berlin.

"The governments of the Netherlands and Germany will answer for this," he said. Salvini called Rackete a "scamp who is doing politics at the expense of immigrants, paid by who knows who." "If someone thinks laws are jokes they will pay to the hilt".

Salvini has instituted fines for NGO ships who enter Italian waters without permission. The European Commission has said it is in touch with member States about taking in the migrants aboard.

