PM suggests "common sea heritage management system" for the Med.

Eddie Fenech Adami yesterday floated the idea of a Mediterranean "common sea heritage management system" which could be the only prospect open as a European Union initiative "with the cooperation of non-European Mediterranean partners".

Addressing the 15th international symposium of the Democratic Constitutional Rally in Tunis, he spoke of a juridical vacuum, saying that most of the Mediterranean was deemed at law to be high seas where it was practically impossible to establish 200-mile exclusive economic zones, or for it to be completely sliced up as the North Sea has been.

The "common sea heritage management system", he said, could be "the only way to ensure that the totality of human, as well as mineral and biological resources of the entire Euro-Mediterranean sphere is brought to work harmoniously together, without anyone seeking to destroy the distinctiveness of the other".

Dr Fenech Adami spoke of an agency that could eventually bring about the cooperative and holistic management of those resources that are best managed collectively, such as the sea beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

This would create a highly effective network in favour of peace and development in the area, he said.

The prime minister said Malta envisaged that the development of a Euro-Mediterranean space, which could have a positive and transforming impact on globalisation, needed to move on three levels: cultural, political and economic.

"It is clear that there has to be a strong enhancement of intra-Mediterranean exchanges if a holistic development of the region is to be envisaged," he said.

The "emblem" of the cultural level was currently the Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for dialogue between cultures, which Malta is offering to host and which the Foreign Affairs Ministers are due to settle at a meeting in Naples in December.

Dr Fenech Adami said the creation of a political unit, which draws its vigour from cultural diversity, would be a demonstration of considerable strength - "of course, of a different nature from military might, but, for that very reason, a better model of the viable, equitable forum of world governance that we would so like to see evolve in the fullness of time".

For the Euro-Mediterranean world to become a competent actor on the world's stage, it must include the integration on equal footing of its Muslim component, whether in the shape of states with a Muslim cultural tradition, or of the large and growing Muslim communities in the European countries, he said.

Dr Fenech Adami said productive exchanges between the law-makers of the Mediterranean have taken the shape of conferences of speakers, or presidents of parliamentary chambers of the region, the fourth session of which is meeting in Malta next February.

He said law-makers must learn to collaborate and that an effective partnership can only be established if there was a communion of values - the only basis on which mutual trust could be built.

He said the historic importance of the Neighbourhood, or Immediate Environment article in the EU Constitutional Draft lay in the fact that it was the "clearest expression of a choice of identity that the EU had to make and the surest indication of a definite vision of the world's future that it had to give.

"The Neighbourhood article makes it clear that the EU should not be envisaged as an aim for its own sake; that is to say, its aim is not defensive, the enclosure of a notional fortress Europe.

"Rather, the draft Constitutional Treaty recognises the EU as a stage in a more extensive evolution - towards the eventual setting up of a system of world governance."

The government was eager to continue to fulfil the role Malta has played in the Euro-Med process since 1995, Dr Fenech Adami said.

He said the increase of foreign investment in the Mediterranean area was "probably the most urgent requirement for the creation of a truly Euro-Mediterranean space, with due weight in the global situation".