Starting out right

One of the little rules that I try to follow when beginning any new venture is to start off in the way that I mean to continue. There is nothing so dispiriting and demotivating as starting off with a great flourish only to find that, because of lack of preparation or possession of incorrect facts, one has to wind down, retract statements made or go back to the drawing board.

In the case of the new shadow spokesman for foreign affairs, Leo Brincat, I sincerely hope, for all of our sakes including his own, that he does not mean to continue in the rather sour vein that he has started.

I look forward, in my relationship with Mr Brincat, to being grilled and kept on my toes by him. I look forward to him asking difficult questions that I will do my utmost to answer as best I can. I look forward to having interesting discussions and debates with him, hopefully even to participate in joint endeavours or push joint positions where possible. But for all this to happen - for there to be a healthy relationship between government minister and shadow minister - we need to be ready to accept facts as facts, even if we must at times differ in our interpretation of them.

Mr Brincat takes me to task, for example, because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been "silent" about such hot issues as the Middle East peace process. Excuse me? Perhaps over the last few years he has not been following foreign affairs quite as closely as I'm sure he is doing now. We have issued countless statements about the Middle East. We have repeatedly condemned acts of violence, terrorist acts and human rights abuses in the region. We have time and again urged the parties to show increased commitment to the peace process. We have loudly supported the Quartet - the EU, US, Russia and the UN - in its efforts to find a way out of the present bloody mess. We have aligned ourselves with numerous EU statements that have supported the peace process and given important support to the vision we all have of a viable state of Palestine living peacefully side by side with the state of Israel.

More than this, outside of the spotlight of the media, in every forum that we have taken part in - and I can assure you we scrupulously and actively take part in every regional forum that there is - we have quietly but systematically worked to try and build trust, facilitate dialogue and bridge the communication gap that unfortunately exists between the various parties. I am sure this is exactly what Mr Brincat would be trying to do if he were in my place. So why try and create a division where none exists?

We both agree broadly on the Middle East - so would it not make sense to treasure such consensus rather than to bend over backwards to disagree anyway?

Same thing with multilateral relations, bilateral relations and economic affairs.

Mr Brincat comes up with the old chestnut that we only dealt with the EU application in the last legislature and neglected other responsibilities. Not so. The last five years have seen the intensification of the excellent relations we have with our Mediterranean partners and with other countries from further afield such as the US, China and Russia.

In those five years we signed over 80 bilateral treaties with other countries - and real, substantive treaties that deliver gains to our citizens, not the airy "Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation" of yesteryear that were often not worth the paper they were written on. Similarly, in the multilateral sphere we signed over 60 treaties and have participated actively in the multilateral fora of which we are members.

What about economic affairs?

Mr Brincat grudgingly notes that we have set up a department to ensure that we get the maximum possible value out of our ministries but has already started passing snide remarks about it. Our network of embassies is a vital tool for the country, and urgently needs to be further extended.

Unfortunately, for a small country like Malta, the cost of maintaining such a network is proportionately greater. That is why we have established an Economic and Cultural Affairs Department, aimed at ensuring that we maximise the value we get out of our embassies even in non-political spheres. Again, I think that Mr Brincat would fully subscribe to these aims.

Which brings me to my final message to Mr Brincat. Please criticise where you need to and carry out your role as opposition spokesman as robustly as necessary - but in foreign affairs we are lucky that, at least now, we seem to agree in virtually all policy areas. That should be something positive and not something to be undermined by trying to invent issues where none exist.

Dr Borg is minister of foreign affairs.