A kafuffle in a coffee cup

Never would I have thought that a standoff concerning a mere couple of hundred migrants could have escalated the way it did. If Roberto Maroni wished to impress his Lega Nord supporters what better way of doing so than picking a quarrel with a sovereign state, a member of the EU to boot? What a hero! That the sovereign state in question happens to be minuscule and is overpopulated with a mere 400,000 people appears to have escaped the notice of those Italians who have been lambasting us for a week. To date, the situation remains unresolved. That Malta inherited vast territorial waters due to its colonial past is a fact. If I am not mistaken, these waters are also the same as our search and rescue area, which is why Frontex was set up. That these waters are potential oil bonanzas is also a fact, however, unless we wish to have Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's gunboats trained on us once again, it is a no go situation.

To the uninformed, Malta appears to want to have its cake and eat it. It was when Senator Maroni added insult to injury by saying that Italy had absorbed 40,000 immigrants in the last 18 months who by rights should have been brought here that he really played to a type of gallery that has absolutely no idea and cares still less about the southern hemisphere, whether it be Tunisia, Sicily, Calabria or Malta. Do these people not realise that 40,000 is a tenth of our population?

So here we are caught between two leviathans, Italy and Libya, both of which want us to give up our territorial waters and the Medina Bank along with it. This is what it is all about.

The Pinar incident was coincidental. The Italian TV stations said that the hapless immigrants on the Pinar were taken to Agrigento on purely humanitarian grounds and not legal ones.

That sanctifies Italy, which in the eyes of the world now smells of roses and, consequently, demonises us as pitiless monsters! Till last Sunday there was not a whisper about the "nearest port of call" regulation, which because of the proximity of Lampedusa, Linosa and Pantalleria to the Gulf of Sirte, are usually the nearest landfalls and, consequently, the ones that receive the bulk of refugees whether political, economic or humanitarian with the Italian hinterland to absorb the influx.

Although I cannot blame Italy altogether for being sore about it, these are the consequences of our history and theirs, which, as we all know, is full of accidental twists and turns. Because right wingers tend to regard Malta as terra irridenta that does not mean that, because we are not, we are to be picked upon in this way.

As things stand, Malta is certainly not in an enviable position. Because of our neutrality we are unable to become a member of Nato once more. That would certainly shut the Italians up regarding who takes who, how and when. So where does that leave us? The only alternative apart from Nato would be to invite the US to set up a military base here to keep an eye on the maverick colonel and go 50-50 on the oil extracted from the Medina Bank, which, I am told, will yield gazillions of barrels a day! The stumbling block is that I cannot imagine Moviment Graffiti, CNI or even any of the political parties relinquishing the illusion of neutrality and accepting this without hollering to high heaven. However, what is the alternative? We have none apart from being bullied by our neighbours in this dastardly way.

We are too poor and too insignificant to afford being neutral despite Alfred Sant's wishful thinking that we could be Switzerland in the Med. The Maroni saga does not end here. Illegal immigration is not going to stop. Nobody can do anything about it. This is fact. This is the Third Siege of Malta and it can and will get worse. What chance of survival do we have by being stiff necked and hanging on to the impossible dream of neutrality? We can only be as neutral as our neighbours will allow us to be.

Has Josè Manuel Barroso rapped the Italians on the knuckles for this latest paprata and sent Mr Maroni in the corner wearing a dunce's cap? No he hasn't. Despite Dom Mintoff's past demonstrations of affection for the colonel, and vice versa, I can never call him a friend and nor can you.

And what about Silvio Berlusconi's Italy? Mr Maroni's tirade was an undeserved stab in the back that we can ill afford. It's now time for the thinking hats to come out and fast.