Malta should hand over the 171 migrants rescued close to Lampedusa to Italy after the Italian prime minister admitted it was a mistake not to accept them, opposition leader Joseph Muscat said yesterday.

In controversial statements last week Dr Muscat had praised Italy for defending its national interest by blocking the boat’s entry into Lampedusa on April 7 and he said Malta should do likewise.

Clarifying his statements yesterday during a recorded interview on One Radio, Dr Muscat said defending the national interest did not mean allowing people to drown.

“Now that (Italian Prime Minister) Silvio Berlusconi has admitted it was a mistake not to allow the migrants to disembark in Lampedusa, which was closer to the scene of the rescue, Malta should send the migrants to Italy,” Dr Muscat said.

He was interviewed by The Times journalist Christian Peregin and a journalist from his party’s media house Ramona Attard.

Dr Muscat said the Nationalist Party had adopted “a fascist tactic” when it produced a Youtube video with footage of drowning migrants and blaming him for loss of life.

“I would not allow lives to be lost. This is not the case,” he said, insisting that defending the national interest meant being tough without compromising human lives.

Dr Muscat shrugged off criticism that his words sounded like those of a far-right politician rather than the progressive and moderate politician he purports to be.

“Talking about national interest and security should not be the monopoly of extreme right parties. We have to stop believing that whoever speaks of the national interest is racist or xenophobic.

“If mainstream politicians abdicate responsibility for addressing migration, which people on the ground talk about, it would give space for extremists to fill the void.”

Challenged whether this meant he was more concerned about losing votes to extremists, Dr Muscat insisted the opposite was true.

“It is not a question of losing votes because as things stand it pays more to remain silent,” he said.

He noted that in the early 1990s when hundreds of Albanian migrants came to Malta by ship after escaping unrest in their country, then Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami had only allowed those who needed medical help to disembark.

“A decision was taken to send back the Albanians because Malta could not handle that amount of people. At the time nobody accused (Dr) Fenech Adami of being racist or extremist,” he said.

While racism worried him, Dr Muscat said he would not point his finger at people worried about their standard of living and job losses.

Asked for solutions to tackle migration, Dr Muscat accused the government of being weak with the European Union.

“Malta should have abstained from voting in favour of the final text in the Luxembourg meeting of home affairs ministers held on Monday,” he said.

During the meeting, EU member states turned down Malta and Italy’s request to activate the emergency burden-sharing mechanism because of a mass influx of people fleeing Libya.

Italy approved the final text with reservations.

“Many more summits were held to discuss dropping bombs on Libya than how to tackle illegal migration as a result of the conflict, which is Malta’s major concern,” Dr Muscat said.

He disagreed, however, with Italian Home Affairs Minister Roberto Maroni’s comments that Italy should consider withdrawing from the EU.

Malta should threaten to use its veto, he added, on other EU-related issues to hammer home the point that migration was a major concern.

He accused the government of being an advocate of the EU, insisting that Malta needed long-term solutions, and not “acts of charity” from certain countries.

“Three years ago we were right to say the government should not have accepted the immigration pact. Any serious politician would have realised that the immigration pact was drafted by a bureaucrat to appease the situation,” he said.

Dr Muscat said he agreed with the government’s opposition to the decision taken last week by the EU council of ministers to give migrants who have been resident for more than five years more social rights.

Malta was the only country to oppose the legislation, which passed since it required a qualified majority.

In a statement, the Nationalist Party accused Dr Muscat of being populist and insensitive to the plight of migrants escaping a war zone.

“(Dr) Muscat should be ashamed because, instead of apologising, he repeated his shocking statements,” the PN said, insisting that the solutions advocated by the Labour leader were haphazard and only intended to appease people.

Being tough on immigration, the PN added, did not mean being irresponsible like other countries have been.

In another statement, Alternattiva Demokratika urged Dr Muscat to stop venting xenophobic populist discourse.

“In 2009, Muscat had suggested a suspension of the Geneva Convention, thus following the footsteps of (Muammar) Gaddafi.

“Unfortunately, certain self-proclaimed progressives are silent in all this. Even worse, some are apologising for Labour’s lunacy, even though it is sounding like a Maltese version of Italy’s Lega Nord,” AD chairman Michael Briguglio said.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com