The Nationalist Party has deplored the performance of surgeon Anthony Zammit at the Labour Party's general conference, accusing him of using the operation he had carried out on the Opposition Leader Alfred Sant to gain personal political mileage.

Mr Zammit, a Labour candidate at the next general election, stole the show on the first day of the conference on Thursday, declaring that the party had "emerged triumphant" from the operation he had performed on Dr Sant.

"The Nationalists were offended when we told them he is there and he will be there... They described my bulletins as similar to Fidel Castro's... Where is the professional ethic? They threw mud, cast doubts, created uncertainty. He is there and he will be there," he said.

He compared Dr Sant's case with that of the former PN leader Eddie Fenech Adami (whom he did not name), saying that while the former availed himself of Maltese doctors others went to the US. The PN said the medical profession had never been politicised to this extent, not even at the height of the dispute between the doctors and the Labour government in the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s.

"Mr Zammit obscenely attacked the operation carried out on former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami," the PN said. It pointed out that Dr Fenech Adami had gone to the Mayo Clinic in the United States on the advice of his own doctors, which also included Mario Vassallo - the same consultant involved in Dr Sant's recent operation.

In Dr Fenech Adami's case, the diagnosis in Malta was inconclusive, besides the fact that at the Mayo Clinic the former Prime Minister was seen by a Maltese specialist, Michael Camilleri, who recommended the surgery he eventually successfully underwent, the PN said.

"All this shows how unfair Mr Zammit was when he tried to use Dr Sant's operation for partisan motives. This when the whole country showed great maturity throughout the past month and did not try to use this case to gain political mileage."