Malta should mediate between Muammar Gaddafi and the army of protesters who want to overthrow him, rather than embarking on an EU sanctions initiative , according to former Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.

“Violence has to stop from both ends. This is not a question of taking actions against one side, but trying to mediate between the two. I cannot understand how the UN is contemplating action and not mediation,” Dr Mifsud Bonnici told The Sunda yTimes.

Asked if he would advise Mr Gaddafi to step down, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said: “No, I would tell him to come to a compromise.”

The former Labour leader is in a unique position, not only knowing Col Gaddafi personally but having been credited with saving his life and that of his family when he warned him of oncoming US fighter planes when his Tripoli compound was bombed in 1986.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici insisted that a mediatory role in this case was Malta’s vocation.

“Isn’t this Malta’s work?” he said, when asked who should mediate.

“Malta, in agreement with the EU, should try to take the role of mediator. I’m not saying we will succeed, but we should try. After all, according to our Constitution we have an obligation to work actively for peace. You don’t do that through sanctions or through taking part in military activities.”

His advice comes in the wake of comments made by several international leaders who condemned the bloody crackdown of the Libyan regime, which is believed to have killed thousands of civilians.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici insisted that even if the protests started as peaceful demonstrations, the situation had turned into an armed conflict between two sides, “a civil war”.

“So to ask one side to stop using violence is not correct. You cannot take sides in a civil war.

“This means that the government either gives in and the system ends there, or not. Given that the government is not prepared to give in, you need mediation. The alternative is the mightiest wins.”

Asked to comment to the fact that Mr Gaddafi’s public statements in the past days do not suggest he is inclined to mediate, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said:

“I don’t agree with you there because nobody has contemplated this so far. It is precisely because of his speeches that I am saying there needs to be mediation, because once the government is not ready to leave, there is no way of avoiding fighting and deaths.”

He argued the problem was not the issue of Mr Gaddafi stepping down, but the fact that the protesters were demanding the dismantling of his revolution. “It’s a psychological issue. That is why things need to be discussed differently.”

Asked if he feels his and successive Maltese governments will be judged negatively by history for the support they gave to the Gaddafi regime, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said: “Is there a country which did not support Libya? Italy, did, the US had commercial ties, Tony Blair and the UK did. If anyone made a mistake, the whole world did.”

The Libyan leader never forgot Dr Mifsud Bonnici’s 1986 gesture. Only last year, Libyan Foreign Minister Mousa Koussa thanked Malta for Dr Mifsud Bonnici’s warning. In November, Dr Mifsud Bonnici was in Tripoli to present the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights – an award given to Dom Mintoff in 2008 and before that to Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

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