Europe's obligations towards Malta
In response to my article (Only Burden Shedding, October 10), Evarist Saliba (Malta's Obligations Towards Migrants, October 14) accused me of going into a "cold-war ideological rant" and of "standard anti-US rhetoric". Why? He must surely realise that...
In response to my article (Only Burden Shedding, October 10), Evarist Saliba (Malta's Obligations Towards Migrants, October 14) accused me of going into a "cold-war ideological rant" and of "standard anti-US rhetoric". Why? He must surely realise that we are living in a US-dominated unipolar world - a world in which there is only one master, one sovereign, one centre of authority, one centre of force and power and one centre of decision-making. Not much of a democracy! "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Is there any local or regional war in which the US is not involved, either directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly?
I could not understand why Mr Saliba felt it relevant to bring out the fact that I am "a former member of the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs" and I consider his remark rather undiplomatic. Whether this held any importance for readers or whether it was relevant to his arguments is something that I cannot gauge.
I'm sure that most readers are well aware of our obligations under the SAR Convention and I never contested the fact that we should do everything possible to rescue persons in distress at sea. We are even more generous than that towards less fortunate and distressed people. However, it's more than high time that we seriously start thinking of Europe's obligations towards Malta, after so many years of serving the interests of foreign powers.
Although I would not like to prolong this into any long-drawn argument, I would ask Mr Saliba to read between the lines to find the answers to the questions he posed and also check what other much bigger EU countries, such as Italy and Spain, are doing to solve this problem.
Finally, I would like to suggest that Mr Saliba directs his arguments in favour of the signing of the EU Immigration Pact to the great majority of the Maltese population (over 75 per cent according to the The Times vox pop) who strongly expressed their disapproval of the Pact. Maybe he will have more luck in persuading them than he had with me!