BERLIN -Berlin will disburse aid to migrant charity groups operating in the Mediterranean imminently, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday, defending the work of sea rescuers as vital amid a spat with Rome on the issue.

A sharp increase in migrant arrivals this year has led to differences around Europe towards charity boats trying to help asylum seekers on one of the world's most perilous sea crossings.

"We talked about this today because of the different views with regard to funding - and in three cases, the payment of the funds is imminent," Baerbock said at a press conference with her Italian counterpart, Antonio Tajani, in Berlin.

Earlier this week, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz telling him she learned with "astonishment" of the German initiative to finance the migrant charity groups.

Baerbock said her government was lobbying at the EU level for a new European sea rescue mission.

"As long as this doesn't exist, civilian sea rescuers in the Mediterranean are performing life-saving tasks," she said.

Tajani also weighed in on the issue, saying that he had reminded his German counterpart of Meloni's letter.

"Nobody is waging a war against NGOs, we only say that they cannot ... act as a sort of magnet to attract irregular migrants," Tajani said.

The minister told Friday's La Repubblica newspaper that sea NGOs should bring rescued migrants to their flag nation state, rather than Italy, and recalled that several of them are registered in Germany.

"This is the only possible solution," he said.

Italy's right-wing government is pursuing a hard line on immigration as it faces a surge in arrivals from North Africa, and has also restricted the activities of migrant rescue NGOs.

Earlier this week, the deputy leader of Italy's co-ruling League party, Andrea Crippa, evoked Nazism to criticise Berlin's centre-left government, and called its support for NGOs a hostile attempt to destabilise Rome's rightist administration.

While "80 years ago the German government decided to invade (other) states with the army", it is now "funding the invasion of clandestines" in countries ruled by governments it does not like, Crippa told the Affaritaliani website. REUTERS