Caution on Italian troops in Ukraine UN mission - Salvini

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 25 - Deputy Premier and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini on Tuesday said the government has not discussed sending Italian troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping effort, expressing caution over the idea of deploying them within a UN mission.
    "The government is not talking about Italian soldiers in Ukraine, nobody asked us even a soldier.
    "We will talk about it when we are asked.
    "We already have thousands of Italian soldiers around the world, I would be very cautious before sending more", Salvini said when asked by reporters about sending Italian troops to Ukraine as part of a UN mission on the sidelines of a congress on immigration organized at the Lower House by the right-wing League party he leads.
    Earlier on Tuesday, Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Italy could consider the possibility of deploying troops in future buffer zones in Ukraine as part of a UN peacekeeping mission while noting that he did not believe European or NATO troops would be useful and that the deployment of Italian troops had never been discussed.
    However, he noted that, "if we need to create a buffer zone, it is necessary to send troops under the flag of the United Nations, and in such a case Italy could be available, as occurs in Palestine, but always with everyone's co-responsibility".
    Tajani stressed that "an interposition force must be under the United Nations so it is neutral". (ANSA).