Broken arrow

Years before she visited Malta during the Bush-Gorbachev summit, the USS Belknap, while 50 miles off Malta, communicated a "Broken arrow" alert to the President of the United States. A fire had broken out on board the nuclear armed warship and threatened to cause radioactive contamination in the area.

The people of Malta slept soundly in their beds while the incident took place blissfully unaware that windborne radioactive fallout from the accident could bring death, disease and the permanent evacuation of their entire country.

The USS Belknap required major repairs after the accident and returned to service only after eight years. The accident was not reported in Maltese newspapers at the time. The first mention of the incident came in 1988 during protests over the visit of a Royal Navy flotilla accompanying the aircraft carrier Ark Royal.

I know because I was secretary general of Zghazagh ghall-Ambjent (currently Friends of the Earth) at the time. The protests caused furious partisan debate and also made space for articles explaining the risks of radioactive contamination.

We had the benefit of detailed information collated for the Greenpeace Nuclear Free Seas campaign. The Neptune Papers referred to evidence given before the US Congress and made public under the US Freedom of Information Act. It was only fair that we should make the facts known to the Maltese public.

It was unfortunate that the ally of the environmentalists on this issue turned out to be the Malta Labour Party under the leadership of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. Greens wanted to alert the country to a real danger, the MLP wanted to have a power struggle with the new PN government.

Discussion died when the MLP protests erupted in an act of piracy with the hijacking of the tanker Copper Mountain from its berth to anchor across the mouth of Grand Harbour. The Nationalists outmanoeuvred Dr Mifsud Bonnici switching the Ark Royal landfall to St Paul's Bay and holding a parliamentary debate in which a resolution was passed declaring Malta a nuclear free zone. The situation was defused.

The Greens felt they had won more than they had ever hoped for. They were to be disappointed. The MLP overkill had produced another cunning compromise from the endless supply of the PN but nothing substantial.

The nuclear free zone resolution remained a dead letter. It has since been the practice to inform visiting warships of Malta's policy and to assume that naval visitors respect it. There is no control mechanism. The most dangerous contraband is never sought among its most likely carriers.

Although the Greens seemed to have won more than they ever hoped for in the nuclear free zone resolution, in time they came to realise that more had been lost for commonsense than was gained in the partisan truce. The PN-MLP struggle over the Ark Royal visit renewed the Cold War divide in Malta making the issue a no go area for many years.

Anti-nuke campaigning was nominally pointless because the issue had been officially endorsed. It also raised the spectre of deep partisan division and evoked the memory of an insurrectional protest. For years the Greens fought shy of this vital issue because the partisan labelling attached to it was far too strong.

The PN was happy. The issue was wrapped up and the government had not lost any room to manoeuvre. Warship visits became more frequent and there was clear popular support for them from commercial interests and from military hardware buffs.

The nuclear contamination risk was discounted by the government and by an ill-informed population. A flurry of newspaper articles 16 years ago was all that remained.

Who cares about radioactive contamination if there's money to be made from naval rest and recreation? The kids enjoy clambering over warships, the older kids love the big guns and warplanes. The bars sell more beer and the government rakes in berthing fees.

Memories of WWII and real affection for our allies in the fight against Fascism masks the present day dangers. The Greens are made out to be spoilsports and more than a little rude to our guests. Nobody seems to consider the rudeness of guests who bring the risk of radioactive contamination into our home.

The arm wrestle between the PN and the MLP remained in the background, re-emerging over the USS La Salle incident. It was not nuclear contamination that sparked off the showdown but interpretation of an outdated constitutional provision which the MLP is happy to preserve in its obsolete state as a lever in its political power struggle.

Partisan opportunism and shortsighted political expediency have prevented us from discussing this vital national foreign and security policy issue on a common ground. In an effort to change this, Alternattiva Demokratika filed a constitutional case during the USS La Salle debacle in order to provoke a common cause discussion and an updating of the Constitution by parliament. Nothing happened again.

The MLP was in no mood to make concessions which would have eliminated the neutrality issue from its anti-EU armoury. More shortsightedness. The PN won on the basis of more work for the drydocks. Now we learn that, the more work, the greater the financial loss.

Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party would not be happy simply with an updating of the active neutrality provisions in the Constitution. We want a new constitutional provision making the 1988 nuclear free zone resolution a permanent and effective safeguard against the risks of radioactive contamination of Maltese territory. The Maltese, regardless of political affiliation, deserve no less.

Partisan stalemate between the other political parties has led to the demise of the NFZ resolution to the extent that we have since hosted a British nuclear powered submarine in Grand Harbour and permitted the passage of another through territorial waters when it had reported a leak from its reactor. The government was absent once more.

The recent report of the nuclear weapons accident aboard HMS Tiger in Grand Harbour in 1974 should open our eyes to the unacceptable risks involved. There is no Maltese harbour certified to host nuclear armed or nuclear powered vessels. Not all ports in the home countries of the nuclear naval powers are so certified and such vessels only berth where they are certified to do so - in their home waters. In Malta it is different - because the Maltese are very hospitable.

The government's wishy-washy attitude towards nuclear contraband by naval forces is a national humiliation. It is no affront to any naval power that Malta should take precautions against such a total risk. Malta risks complete annihilation through radioactive contamination. It should be seen as a national affront that we are exposed to such risks by our friends. It is not enough that our friends are confident that they have taken sufficient precautions: we have too much to lose.

We should have the national pride to reject the policy of some of our friends who refuse to confirm or deny whether any of their naval vessels carry nuclear weapons. They are, of course, free to pursue their policy but not to visit our harbours while they maintain it.

Had the USS Belknap fire led to radioactive contamination, Malta could have been exposed to very serious risk. Had such a fire occurred in Grand Harbour also without any nuclear detonation, the whole country would have been contaminated and the prohibitive cost of decontamination would have meant the permanent evacuation of Malta and the end of the Maltese as a nation.

None of this is alarmist. These are known facts we have chosen to ignore for decades because we are permanently embroiled in a futile arm wrestle between two political parties having a greater interest in internecine feuding than in real politics. Who cares which of them wins if we all lose permanently?

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt