Col Emanuel Mallia, of the Armed Forces of Malta, has been selected by the EU's Monitoring and Information Centre to participate in the EU Observer Mission in Italy in relation to the Costa Concordia cruise liner incident.

Due to the complexity of the emergency, the Italian Civil Protection has invited a small EU mission to observe the rescue and marine pollution operations, and to draft a short report with the main findings to share lessons learned with all participating states.

As a search and rescue expert, Col Mallia will join experts in other disciplines from Italy, France and Norway. The observer mission starts today and is expected to draw to a close on January 29.

Commenting on this selection, AFM Commander Martin Xuereb said: "This can be considered as additional confirmation of how others are recognising the AFM's level of expertise in this field. This is an additional feather in Malta's cap, one that is added to others acquired recently."

The AFM's SAR capability received a clean bill of health during the Voluntary Member State Audit conducted by the IMO at the end of summer. The auditors also identified a number of best Maltese practices, which will be remarked upon in their final report.

Late last year, the AFM conducted an intensive one month SAR training for personnel from the Israeli SAR Authority, and will be delivering training to SAR personnel from Black Sea countries on behalf of the International Maritime Organisation.

On the heels of these successes, the AFM has received a request by Libya to provide training in the area of SAR, whilst an agreement has been finalised with the Swiss government to sponsor six students (Libyan, Tunisian, and Egyptian) to attend the SAR Coordinator's Course being held at Safi Barracks later on this year.

For the second year running, last December Malta co-hosted, with US Naval Forces Europe-Africa, and Commander, US 6th Fleet, the Eurasia Partnership Capstone annual maritime conference with its training workshops ranging from maritime law enforcement, maritime search and rescue, marine environmental protection, leadership development courses for non-commissioned officers and, for the first time during EPC, advanced network-enabled maritime interdiction operations.

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