How Mintoff whored Malta out to Gaddafi: a contemporary news report
MALTA: GADDAFI TO THE RESCUE
Time Magazine, 17 January 1972
When one love-smitten member of Malta’s 55-man Parliament neglected legislative duties last week for marriage and a brief honeymoon, Prime Minister Dom Mintoff promptly told the entire house to take a five-day recess.
There was nothing festive about the holiday. Maltese opinion is sharply split over Mintoff’s order that British troops either pay higher rents or quit the island (TIME, Jan. 10).
With tensions rising as his Jan. 15 deadline approached and with only a one-vote parliamentary advantage, Mintoff was afraid to risk a vote of confidence while the groom —one of his own Labor Party supporters—dallied elsewhere.
The legislative holiday was one in a series of bizarre events on the tiny Mediterranean island brought on by “Deadline Dom” and his decree.
He wants a $33.8 million hike over the present rentals of $13 million a year that the British pay for their bases. Since Malta is no longer strategically vital, London is willing to pay an additional $11.7 million and no more.
To underscore British determination, Whitehall last week flew in a party of expert “dismantlers” to knock down its facilities. Evacuation began of 4,994 British dependents aboard R.A.F. VC-10s at Luqa Airport.
There were some signs that Britain may not want to pass the point of no return. In London, Defense Minister Lord Carrington canceled a Far East tour in order “to supervise the withdrawal of British forces”—or to be available if negotiations were resumed.
But unless they are, the last troops could be out by March 31.
As the British departure began, there was a mysterious arrival. At Luqa, a Libyan air force cargo plane discharged 44 men in civilian clothes who were lugging 4-ft.-long wooden crates.
Government spokesmen insisted that the Libyans were “technicians” who had come to operate Luqa when British air-traffic controllers leave; their crates merely contained technical gear.
Most Maltese considered that a most unlikely story; Libya is so inexpert at air-traffic control that its airports at Tripoli and Benghazi are run by French and Egyptian technicians.
More probably the arrivals were policemen and their crates contained arms. They had apparently come in case riots break out over the British evacuation and Maltese police are unable—or unwilling—to cope.
Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi appears willing to support Mintoff financially. Gaddafi has already loaned Malta about $3,000,000 to replenish the government’s diminishing social security fund.
Now he seems ready to do more.
The end of 170 years of British use of the island would mean eliminating 22,000 full-or part-time jobs and losing a $54 million annual contribution to the economy. Gaddafi recently dispatched a plane to Malta to fly Mintoff to Tripoli. The upshot of their discussions was believed to be an agreement that Libya will cover such losses.
Gaddafi is more than able to do so. His oil industry, the Middle East’s richest, provides annual revenues of $2.4 billion; these will undoubtedly increase as a result of his sudden nationalization of British Petroleum’s Libyan wells last month.
From this hoard Gaddafi doles out about $125 million a year to Egypt, some of which compensates for lost Suez Canal tolls, $40 million to Syria and $10 million to the Sudan.
He is reportedly ready to advance Mintoff $140 million over a three-year period, just what the Prime Minister is demanding from the British.
What Gaddafi wants in return is not clear.
Libya hardly needs Malta’s bases. The most plausible explanation is that the youthful Gaddafi—at 31, a xenophobic nationalist and Moslem fundamentalist who detests Communism as much as colonialism—is seizing an opportunity to neutralize Malta.
His money is payable only after the British leave and on condition that the Russian Mediterranean fleet is also barred.
He particularly wants to get rid of British planes, which, he insists, have been overflying Egypt from Malta to spy for Israel.
If their reconnaissance flights are ended, he recently told startled Maltese visitors, the Arab nations should be able to defeat Israel within three years.
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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,877632-1,00.html
What painful reports these are.
At least it’s clear that Mintoff didn’t have the whole nation behind him.
Since Gaddafi clearly helped Malta, his honours bestowed by different Maltese governments are justified.
[Daphne – Gaddafi helped Malta like Hitler helped Italy, David. Your lack of insight and your literalism never fail to astound.]
As far as I know, the Mintoff government did not only court Libya but also had excellent relations with Italy.
[Daphne – Oh, David the Pedant, you’re ‘bek’. If you read very carefully through AST’s piece, you will see that Italy’s relations with Malta were rooted in fear (feeding the lion) because Malta was a satellite of Gaddafi’s Libya. Perhaps you are too young to remember the jokes on RAI at the time: Malta, la Valletta di Gaddafi, a pun on the Italian word for ‘showgirl’ being the same as the name of our capital.]
What excellent relations with Italy?
There was a time when Maltese going to Italy on holiday or business were not allowed to spend money there.
We were expected to make do with the Lm25 of Maltese currency we were allowed to take out of the country at any one time.
I remember sewing some Italian lira into the hem of my dress. And none of the Italian banks wanted to exchange my Maltese lira notes.
The following extract of a report on a recent speech by a former President of the Republic sheds light on Malta’s relations with Italy:
“In the early 1970’s, Italy and Malta also signed a Protocol of Financial Assistance, renewed throughout the years.
Mintoff and Moro realised how important it was to maintain close relations. In his speech, Dr Ugo Mifud Bonnici expressed how when he formed part of a Nationalist Party delegation in 1978, which was led by Dr Edward Fenech Adami, and contained Dr Vincent Tabone and Dr Guido Demarco, to Malta’s Christian Democratic friends in Italy, he heard Aldo Moro’s reply to a mild reminder by Dr Tabone that, as friends belonging to the same ideological family. Mintoff was grateful to Moro. Relations with Italy were cultivated assiduously by the Labour Administration.”
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=129242
[Daphne – Go on, David, tell us. What light does it shed? This might be an hour of happy foraging through the history books for you, but to me, it’s a quick march through my life. I would never contradict my parents on what life was like in the air-raid shelters – to draw a comparison.]
“Perhaps you are too young to remember the jokes on RAI at the time: Malta, la Valletta di Gaddafi, a pun on the Italian word for ‘showgirl’ being the same as the name of our capital.”
…and so also too young to remember that Joe Grima, then MLP Minister for Tourism, had publicly threatened to sue the utterer of those words – a crow-like hand puppet named Rockefeller.
The Italians weren’t much better. The only thing that kept them away from licking the under soles of Gaddafi’s boots were their NATO obligations. The played the devil’s game much better than us and ended with a lot of bombs and lead.
Daphne, you have made your point about the past, but what is going to happen NOW?
Will the present government administration continue to whore Malta for Libya?
[Daphne – Malta wasn’t whored out to Libya, Farrugia. It was whored out to Gaddafi. So your question is both hypothetical and irrelevant.]
Malta has many issues with Libya, the most prominent is the maritime boundary dispute which has huge implications for Malta’s future prosperity that pale into insignificance the losses of Maltese business during the Libyan rebellion (although our politicians on both sides of the House seems to be only thinking about this). Two issues stand out:
1. Libya has in the past claimed our Medina Bank and even offered licenences over the area. Will Libya recant on its claim on OUR Medina Bank?
2. The Gadaffi regime had declared the Gulf of Sirte (or Sidra) a Libyan historic sea, although this was militarily challenged by the Reagan administration. The Libyan claim pushed Malta’s maximum seabed claim far north. Malta is the most country that stands to loose as a result of the Libyan claim.
The question that springs to mind is what is the Malta government doing about these two issues?
Has it asked the new TNC to reject Libya’s claim over the Gulf of Sirt? Or will we just live with the ridiculous Libyan claim and continue whoring for Libya? I fear that the latter will happen.
[Daphne – It’s a bit premature for that, don’t you think? People are still fighting and in goes Malta ‘Isma hej, what are you going to do about the Gulf of Sirte?’]
Libya is a state and Gaddafi represents the regime that ran the Libyan state.
The Gaddafi regime is effectively now part of history, but the Libyan state remains.
My words that Malta continues to whore for Libya may be hypothetical but they may also be correct. Your premise that this is irrelevant is astounding.
[Daphne – Farrugia, I – unlike you – am capable of distinguishing in this matter between:
1. Libya the state without Gaddafi and Gaddafi’s regime;
2. Legitimate business and non-legitimate business. Yes, it’s true that under Gaddafi things that are against the law in other states – like bribery and corruption – were legitimate. But going along with it was wrong because that is how dictators are shored up. The United States has laws preventing US businesses/citizens from bribing or corrupting public officials anywhere in the world, an ‘extra-territorial’ law which opens US citizens to prosecution in the USA for bribing, for example, somebody in Libya. Malta has no such laws, and some of the people – including politicians – who reinvented themselves as consultants on doing business in Libya actually prided themselves on knowing the right people to bribe.]
As for the latter part of my arguments which you call premature: tell that to France and the UK. Both countries have been negotiating oil concessions in Libya since the beginning of the rebellion. The president of the French oil company Total had even visited the Benghazi government.
[Daphne – Good for them. Well done. They stuck their necks out for the rebellion, they have spent billions of their own tax money, now let them collect. That’s the way it works: it’s called liberalism (the real British meaning, as opposed to sex and divorce).]
This raised alarm in Italy and its national oil company ENI. Not to be outdone by the French, Italy also belatedly recongised the Transitional Nation Council (TNC) in Benghazi (the TNC were awarding ENI oil concessions to Total prior to Italian recognition of TNC).
Meanwhile, Maltese politicians did not seize the opportunity to ask the TNC to declare the Gulf of Sirt as international water (they would have conceded in return for diplomatic recognition). Instead, we kept on bickering on ‘x’ghamel Mintoff’ or ‘x’ghamel Gonzi ma’ Gadaffi’ as if the world really cares (your blog probably led the ‘debate’).
[Daphne – The world may not care, but we do and that’s enough. Remember Socrates’ instruction: know thyself. What do you imagine it means?]
Libya may be pressured by the US to disown the Gulf of Sirt but not by Maltese politicians who continue to whore for Libya till this day. This explains why Malta recognised the TNC, a government that does not recognise our sovereign right over the Medina Bank and further south to the northern rim of the oil-rich Sirt Basin.
[Daphne – Farrugia, you are unable to distinguish between normal diplomatic negotiations (Gulf of Sirte, etc) and whoring (green uniforms for state school children, green public buses, green passports with Libya featured prominently, Arabic ranked with Maltese and English as a university entrance requirement, armed Libyan soldiers allowed to move freely in Malta, Libya given the building FACING THE MALTESE SEAT OF POWER ACROSS PALACE SQUARE, Maltese schoolchildren given copies of the Green Book, taking money from Gaddafi in return for closing down the British military base…those were awful days, Farrugia. Gaddafi and Mintoff are inseparable in my mind now because they were inseparable in mind as a child. Maltese children were the only ones outside LIbya who knew exactly what Gaddafi looked like, recognised his image and knew his name. For shame.]
If that is not whoring for Libya then tell me what that is? Where and when in history did a state recognise a government that does not recognise the borders of that state?
[Daphne – You are obviously not a student, or even a cursory reader, of history.]
We have to thank our Dr Tonio Borg for this treachery.
It seems that TheTimes of Malta has decreed that Gaddafi is out and, like Humpty Dumpty, has fallen off the fence.
Have a look at today’s layout and it’s all about capturing Gaddafi, Malta’s role as a “sensar” (intermediary) between the rebels and pro-Gaddafi Sirte, Malta’s role in the Great Humanitarian Effort (almost equal to Mao’s Long March), and even Luciano Busuttil gets his 15 seconds of fame about his notion of hijacking frozen Libyan assets.
The Times of Malta has become more prudent than Tonio Borg and that’s saying someting.
sorry daphne but this story says nothing to me… it’s just innuendo from a mouthpiece of the west. I assume you know what happened in Greece.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967–1974
I’m sure there’s a lot that needs to be written down about post WWII Europe and the west will come out as dirty and bloody as the bogeymen it created.
“innuendo from a mouthpiece of the west”?
We who lived through those times know pretty well that this is no innuend – maybe extrapolation, but based on real and concrete facts.
Hence the Labour’s obsession with neutrality!
Only as recently as last September: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100915/local/30th-anniversary-of-neutral-malta.326944
Just out…
STQARRIJA TAL-GVERN
Il-Gvern jipprezenta rizoluzzjoni biex jitnehhew l-unuri lil Muammar Gaddafi
Il-Gvern se jkun qieghed jipprezenta rizoluzzjoni fil-Kamra tar-Rapprezentanti skont Att dwar Gieh ir-Repubblika biex jitnehhew l-unuri li nghataw lil Muammar Gaddafi.
Ir-rizoluzzjoni se tigi prezentata hekk kif il-Kamra terga tiltaqa’ wara l-waqfa tas-sajf.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110827/local/malta-strips-gaddafi-of-his-honours.382070
Better late than never, one might add.
As one would expect, Time magazine did not delve into the workings of the political chess game at hand. Dom Mintoff vs Lord Carrington is a classic.
Carrington was playing for time. Indeed, time was on his side as Malta was very short of liquidity (thanks to the Borg Olivier administration). But when Gaddafi provided Mintoff with an open-ended loan facility with the balance to be repaid ONLY if and when agreement is reached, time crossed over to Mintoff’s side. Lord Carrington’s hand was thus compromised. He had to reach an agreement fast… The rest is history, not Daphne’s version though.
Obsessions with Mr. Mintoff.
There was once upon a time an Inspector Javert, one would find this character in Victor Hugo’s world famous ‘Les Miserable’, a gift to humanity Honore de Balzac would call it.
His duty towards his profession: impeccable, irreproachable, and incorruptible. He would keep on chasing a Jean Valjean, a villain and as was common in his times, name and crime were recorded in special outcasts ‘registry’ a kind of rogue’s gallery.
His passion in hunting Jean down and have justice done turns to a kind of ‘obsession’ a ‘culture of vengeance’. His whole energy is centered to that charge he would keep chasing even now that Jean is old, dying and pitifully useless, I am not using this word despairingly, Andre Malraux in his novel ‘La Condition Humaine’ will put it this way.
They say it takes nine months to make a man and one day to kill. But it takes more than nine months to make; it needs seventy/eighty years of vigor, of determination, of so many things. When this man is done, when he completely loses trace of his very young days, and youth and now that he is a real man, he is simply good for nothing other than to pass away. This is generally speaking of course.
Javert however, is still full of health, and vigor, Italians would say “sua vita va a gonfie vele’ his profession gives him that ‘raison d’être’. Javert hunt takes a twist from a prosecutor he becomes slowly and inexorable haunted by his own self, he is himself in the process of maturing, but the self discovery is painful. Unfortunately Javert never redeems himself, he is as steadfast as ever, only to let himself slide and disappear into the black, icy waters of the Seine.
I am always attentive to the other side of what seems obvious. Did Mintoff make history or history made him?
Deleting a comment highlighting the political chess game played out by Mintoff and Carrington, says a lot about the blogger.
[Daphne – ??????]
@kev
You are out of context…Hush now, go back to your slumber..
Ahem , so what was the alternative – whoring the Island to the British Navy & becoming a primary target for Soviet thermal nuclear bombs if the cold war became hot .
And who are exactly the whores and Pimps then ,
“Gaddafi donates to Malta’s Social Security fund ” , oh please .It’s the done thing one way or another in Politics – Tony Blair visited Libya in 2004 on behalf on BP & Sarkozy’s 2007 successful election campaign was part founded by again MR.Frizz Head . None of this makes it right but you can’t cut and paste history to fit ones agenda without looking at this in broader terms – We are all Pimps and Whores ! .
And look at this , It was no big secret the then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wanted to knock Mintoff whilst all this was going on:
http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=52129
Yes ok , we all know Mintoff was no Luke Sky Walker , but he wasn’t no Darth Vader either , so that makes him a kinda erm , Han Solo , hmmm yes .
[Daphne – I don’t know about Malta whoring itself to Britain as a metaphor, Zanzi, but there was certainly a lot of that literally in your part of London. Maybe that’s why you think ‘we are all Pimps and Whores’.
And given a choice between being yoked to Britain and being yoked to Gaddafi’s Libya, if those were really the only two choices available, only nut-jobs would have chosen the latter. But then Malta is full of them. Why, we had so many to spare we even exported them to Soho to run the sex trade. The bottom line is, when you left Malta, you left to ply your trade in Soho, not in Tripoli.]
Very good ,
Clap clap ……..Im 2nd gen sweetie , my Pa was a nice Tal-pepe boy from Qui si sana (ah , you know the type) he moved to Tas-Soho in the 1950’s , – but correct , the 1980’s Malti of Soho were exported though .
Admit it ,the bottom line however is your narrative, based on a stereotype is amusingly wrong but forgiveable- Issa, because I’m Maltese & I live in Soho , that does’t make me a pimp or a ponce or a Dwarf , ok . If you want to see such freakery , I heard you could do no better than to take a trip down Testaferrata Street ,& other such places .
I’ll say it again , they ( World leaders ) are all Pimp’s & Whores , this aint no family show .
Sahha ,
Ara veru l- ikrah wiccek ma jisthix int. Biex illum meta iz- zejt tela fil wicc ta` l-ilma u kullhadd jaf min fejn gabar u sa fejn wassal lil Malta w Ghawdex il Perit Mintoff. Kieku ma` kienx Mintoff inti probabbli ghadek tigri sormok barra, jekk ma` kontx tkun xi wahda mil ftit ghaxriet b-geddumhom fix xaghajr. Mintoff haseb ghal kullhadd u il politika tieghu tista facilment tqabbila max- xandir tal Vangelu. Inti tahseb li ghawn xi hadd jemmen il hdura li tohrog min halqek? Illum kullhadd jaf min int u lanqas tal PN ma` jappoggjaw il mibgheda li inti ghandek lejn hutek Maltin bhalek jew aktar minnek, u qed nighd aktar minnek ghax dawk li inti tobod qatt ma zammew mal barrani kontra Malta.