Mintoff launches his front

Former prime minister Dom Mintoff broke his years-long silence yesterday and bared his talons to use the launch of his anti-EU negotiation Front Maltin Inqumu to challenge Labour leader Alfred Sant to a debate on Super One TV.

Mr Mintoff, showing the same contempt for Dr Sant which Dr Sant has shown for him, said: "Through this debate we will know who has workers' interests at heart and who doesn't."

The front was launched by Mr Mintoff, and a largely mute Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, at a televised "news conference" on Smash TV's Minibus, presented by David Agius.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici has resigned as chairman of the anti-membership Campaign for National Independence to assume the role of coordinator in the FMI, which is against the negotiations being conducted by the government.

In 1997, when Mr Mintoff, today 86, launched his offensive against Dr Sant's government, eventually to bring it down, he claimed he was not in the best of health. His health seems to have improved, God give him life.

For what was meant to be an interactive programme, turned into a typical monologue as Mr Mintoff took over the programme and refused interruptions, getting over awkward questions by talking down the questioner by telling him to wait: "Stenna, Stenna."

The former prime minister lashed out at both the government's and the Labour Party's foreign policies.

He accused the government of wanting to join the EU at all costs, while all Dr Sant spoke of was about "some Switzerland", and that he would not respect the referendum.

Mr Mintoff threw down the gauntlet for Dr Sant after he was asked what he thought of a piece written by General Workers' Union president Salvu Sammut in l-orizzont.

Mr Sammut had said that Mr Mintoff was trying to distract the electorate and that he was living in the past.

But Mr Mintoff replied by saying that Mr Sammut was not speaking on behalf of the GWU and implied that he might have been pushed by somebody else to write the article.

The repercussions of his attack on Dr Sant are yet to become known: in a letter published in l-orizzont recently, former Cospicua mayor Pawlu Muscat said those backing Mr Mintoff had made it clear to him that they would withdraw their participation in FMI if he attacked the MLP leadership or the party itself in his speeches on behalf of the front.

Mr Muscat, a close ally of Mr Mintoff, said there were still many Labour supporters who despised Mr Mintoff for bringing down Dr Sant's government in 1998. Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici cannot be one of them, having rejoined the man who made him prime minister, and yesterday listened to the outburst against Dr Sant without flinching.

Mr Mintoff dedicated a large chunk of his speech to Malta's past, even going back to the times of Napoleon.

He said he had nothing against the EU, but warned that Malta would end up like a servant under the current conditions negotiated by government.

"How can anybody tell us we're going to remain neutral when no one knows where this Europe is heading?" he said - neutrality, laid down in the constitution, is a Mintoff achievement.

"Throughout our history we have always moved ahead. We don't know what's on the other side of the fence."

He said it was a myth to say that the new FMI was outright against the EU.

"But let's join the EU on those matters which we agree upon," was Mr Mintoff's not quite clearcut reply when asked whether his new organisation was in the same boat as the MLP or the CNI.

He said Malta could negotiate an agreement with other countries, and not simply with the EU.

Mr Mintoff said his new organisation was not set up to fight with any organisation, but simply to help the Maltese.

He rekindled the debate on warships and warned that the government would be breaking the constitution if it allowed warships to visit Malta in the coming days. It would be the equivalent of treason, he charged.

In its declaration of objectives handed to the media yesterday, Front Maltin Inqumu described the Maltese as a "small but brave people who survived without dominating and oppressing other communities."

Malta, the front says, has long felt the need to benefit from the moral and material incentives offered by European countries.

This was why Malta concluded an association agreement with the European Economic Community over 30 years ago.

"And that form of close, yet not full membership with the community was adopted as a model by those other countries who, like us, chose to work closely with the community without the obligations and rights of full membership."

The group said that treaties with different countries had guaranteed Malta the sovereignty and neutrality it enjoyed today.

In any new agreement with the EU, Malta should stress that its efforts for peace would remain unhindered.

"We could do more by underlining the need for the pursuit of peace by the EU to which we would give our full contribution.

"We would in particular be ready to share with the Union a common sovereignty solely in the affairs for the achievement of a common peace."

The country must do its utmost to stop the national debt and wipe it out "before it destroys our country".