European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker says it was a serious error to have ended Italy's migrant search and rescue effort last year and to have left one country alone to bear the mission's costs. Juncker told European Union lawmakers Wednesday that it was "a grave mistake." The Italian emergency operation Mare Nostrum was phased out late last year. It was expensive and politically unpopular in Italy even though it plucked tens of thousands from the Mediterranean in 2013-2014.Diplomats are warning that United Nations backing for any European Union plan to address the growing Mediterranean migration crisis could take longer than anyone wants. Even as the EU's foreign policy chief swept through meetings Tuesday at the U.N. to line up diplomatic support, the current president of the U.N. Security Council said, "I don't think we're anywhere close to having it now." EU militaries want legal backing to strike against the boats used by traffickers, who often leave migrants to drift and die at sea. Many set off from Libya, which has fractured into a chaos of competing governments and multiple militias that smugglers exploit. Mogherini said nothing the EU is considering "is intended to be against the Libyan people."This year is on track to be the deadliest year ever for the migrants, many of them fleeing war in Syria or repression in places like Eritrea and Sudan. European members of the council are working on a draft resolution on a legal framework for action, but they say plenty of issues remain. Mogherini said she met Tuesday with the European members of the council Britain, France, Spain and Lithuania and would meet with permanent council member Russia. She meets Wednesday with Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. ambassador Samantha Power. She'll visit China, another permanent council member, next week. "It is not for the EU to set the U.N. Security Council timetable," Mogherini said. "It's not for me to comment on next steps."While the migrants die at sea and EU considers whether to rescue them or not, the U.N. deplored "dire conditions" at migrant detention centers in Libya and said it was helping some of the 1,242 people rescued from sea over the past 10 days. The number of migrants or asylum seekers in eight holding centers across the country had ballooned to 2,663 from 1,455 a month ago, the U.N. refugee agency said. The Mediterranean's worst maritime disaster in decades took place this month when a boat that had left Libya with more than 750 people on board foundered. Just 26 men and two crew members survived. Migrants who are apprehended are brought back to detention centers and in some of them "more than 50 people are crowded into rooms designed for 25," UNHCR spokeswoman Ariane Rummery told reporters. UNHCR said it was helping some of the nearly 1,250 people rescued off Libyan shores by the coast guard over the past 10 days.Among them were more than 200 people from the Horn of Africa, of whom four had suffered serious burn injuries in a gas explosion at a place where they were being held by traffickers, Rummery said. The victims included a 20-year-old mother with extensive burns to her arms and legs and her two-year-old son whose face was badly burnt, she said. "At the request of local authorities, UNHCR is helping to ease the dire conditions," the agency said, adding that most of the people held in the detention centers were Somalis, Eritreans, Ethiopians and Sudanese along with many from West Africa. There is an urgent need "for more medical help, improved ventilation and sanitation as well as relief items," it added. "Rising temperatures and mosquitoes, combined with poor ventilation could spread disease," Rummery warned, adding that UNHCR was distributing soap, underwear and clothes in eight of the country's 15 holding centers. The U.N. agency said foreigners in Libya could be arrested for illegal immigration and be held for a period ranging from one week to a year. It said there were a total of 36,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered on its rolls, with Syrians forming the bulk at 18,000. UNHCR called for the release of "very vulnerable people, like pregnant women and also for alternatives to detention."