ROME- Italy cautioned Tuesday  it could suspend the Schengen agreement at the Brenner pass and Ventimiglia frontiers with France and Austria following the failure in Brussels of EU members to reach an agreement on migrant quotas, official sources said.

 Rome “let its’ European partners know it is willing to send squads of police and customs agents to Brenner and Ventimiglia, replying to Germany and not only them,” Il Messaggero newspaper quoted Italian interior minister sources saying.

 Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said he is not “fully satisfied with the results of the European summit yesterday. Some east European countries pulled out though we did obtain some positive results such as the decision that 24,000 asylum seekers will leave and that repatriations will be done at the expense of the EU.”

 “In the next two months there will be the first redistribution to (elsewhere in) Europe of people asking for asylum from Italy and then we will launch the ‘hotspots,’ sorting centres where one will distinguish those who have the right of asylum from those who instead will be repatriated.

  Arrivals of migrants in Italy have fallen to a trickle in recent days, which Alfano has said is due to the arrest of 468 people smugglers by Italy since the start of the year, meaning that trafficking gangs have switched from sending migrants by sea to Italy from north Africa, preferring the Balkan route.

 Since January 1 Italy has repatriated 9,376 foreigners, either by turning them away at the border or by sending them home after they reached the peninsula, Alfano said last week.