Labour’s International Secretary Alex Sceberras Trigona refused to be drawn on statements by the PN Secretary General that he had “embarrassed the nation” with his close ties to the Gaddafi regime during his time as Foreign Minister during the 1980s.
“All in due course,” was all Dr Sceberras Trigona would say as he pointed out that he was biding his time and would speak only at the “right moment”.
He was asked to react to Paul Borg Olivier’s calls for his resignation during an Independence Day speech.
In not asking Dr Sceberras Trigona to resign, Dr Borg Olivier said, Labour leader Joseph Muscat was endorsing the past actions of his International Secretary.
Dr Sceberras Trigona has endured a torrid few weeks. His name has cropped up time and again as Malta’s main political parties took swipes at the other’s former links to the Gaddafi regime.
Already an active politician in the 1970s, Dr Sceberras Trigona went on to be Foreign Minister between 1981 and 1987.
According to a recent article in the Nationalist Party’s Sunday newspaper Il-Mument, recently declassified CIA cables dating back to between 1988 and 1991 alleged that the PL had received funds from Gaddafi.
The Labour Party was not as tight lipped as its secretary, and in a statement said that if Dr Borg Olivier and Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi were basing their allegations on the recently released CIA files, that meant they also accepted the files’ allegations that Malta was a terrorist hub at the time Malta was governed by a PN administration.
In fact, the cables also suggested that Malta was a “primary launching point” for Libyan intelligence and terrorist teams, including the Lockerbie terrorist attack of 1988.
Labour called on Dr Borg Olivier to either substantiate his claims or withdraw them immediately.
The veracity of the cables has been called into question by campaigners for justice for the Lockerbie bombing, who have accused the key informant behind the cables, Abdul Majid Giaka, of being a “money-grubbing fantasist”.
But the PN defended Dr Borg Olivier’s statements, extending the criticism beyond the claims of the CIA cables and said that Dr Sceberras Trigona had “harboured unnecessary friendships with notorious regimes which tarnished Malta’s international standing”.
It insisted that the PL should “come clean” about allegations that it had received financial assistance from the Gaddafi regime.