Government is in no position to do any such lobbying having made a song and dance about humanitarian action as a sop to opting to remain ‘neutral’, despite having a mandate to do otherwise.

Mass air drops of humanitarian supplies are just not on, for all sorts of reasons.
1) You’d need a large amount of transport planes. That’s one thing that’s in very short supply.
2) You’d need to fly flow, which puts you at risk from shoulder-fired missiles. Or you’d need to fly high and use expensive a complicated automatic navigation systems. Which only the US and France possess. They’ve been used in Afghanistan, but only in very specific cases, to resupply FOBs in dangerous areas.
3) What exactly do you put in the packages? The rebels need weapons, ammo, and most of all they need western advisors. Yes, food and water and medicines are welcome, but they won’t do anything to shorten the war.
4) To drop your supplies to the right people, you need men on the ground. There’s no other way. It’s not a question of zooming in with your sensors on the nearest Green-Red-Black flag. What if it’s just an isolated group? What if they’re not top priority? What if the Loyalists are just a few hundred metres away?

Time and again, history has shown us that humanitarian aid actually PROLONGS conflicts. I hope to christ that we don’t fall into the same trap this time round.

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/31/the-mystery-behind-moammar-gadhafis-birth-some-say-hes-jewish/?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-w%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%7C208175

Not unbelievable at all. Typical Maltese.

Tonio Borg must be out of his depth in the Libya situation. He did, however, look clearly at home wandering round the aisles at Debenhams at The Point yesterday (a public holiday). Maybe it’s time he changed jobs.

As usual he is just making observations of what is happening without actually saying what should be done, let alone offering to do any of that.

“What was government expected to do – put spokes in the wheels of Customs clearance? ”

No, but the government could always give Gaddafi a call to tell him there are smuggler’s lurking in his waters. Or maybe Karmenu could make the call.

Seriously though, one thing the government might be able to do is to lobby the allies to air-drop the supplies. Tey could do it very easily and at virtually no risk – and they could probably deliver far more supplies with one planeload than the volunteers can.

A C-5 can drop well over a hundred tons of supplies in just one flight. I don’t know what kind of ship the ‘smugglers’ are using but my impression is that it is a small one to be more difficult to detect.

They even have precision guided parachute systems that could ensure the supplies land in exactly the right place and not fall into the wrong hands.

A very big factor in all this might be that these ‘businessmen’ are simply hedging their bets and buying influence, both here and in Libya, in line with the foot-in-each-camp policy they are known to generally pursue.

If these individuals and companies chose to remain blind to what was going on in Libya for so many years, why else the twinge of conscience now?