The Maltese government has no interest in membership of Nato.

Not a single item of proof has been brought to substantiate the charges in spite of their severity

Towards the end of yesterday’s session of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs – discussing the opposition’s motion against Malta’s Permanent Representative to the EU – Foreign Minister Tonio Borg said that was the reason why it renewed Malta’s membership of the Partnership for Peace.

At the insistence of the opposition members on the committee, after Mr Richard Cachia Caruana ended his testimony, the committee this afternoon will seek the advice of the Attorney General on whether Malta’s renewal of the PfP programme in 2008 should have received parliamentary approval.

The motion will then go for discussion in a plenary session of the House on Monday.

Early in the sitting, instead of reading a prepared statement, Mr Cachia Caruana was allowed to circulate it as part of the official records.

The statement said that almost 10 hours of sittings had strayed far from the precise charges in the motion, that he had betrayed his country and sought ways of bypassing accountability to Parliament.

Not a single item of proof had been brought to substantiate the charges in spite of their severity. The statement said the only thing remotely conceivable as proof had been a Wikileaks copy of a 2004 cable when Malta was not a member of the PfP. The cable could not in any way substantiate the charges against him; indeed it proved that he had followed the government’s instructions all the way. He had not even been present at one of the meetings referred to in the cable.

It added that Dr George Vella and Dr Luciano Busuttil, the proposers of the motion, were misinterpreting the cable in the face of the minutes of the meeting, written by then-Major (today Brigadier) Martin Xuereb. Mr Cachia Caruana’s recommendations to the Prime Minister had been made 21 days before his meeting with Ambassador Schnabel, who according to Dr Vella was supposed to be giving him the US government’s guidance.

Mr Cachia Caruana categorically described the charges in the motion as false, unfounded, serious and defamatory. The facts showed that he had always executed the government’s policies and sought Malta’s best interests.

It was not true that he had discussed with foreign governments how important decisions on Malta’s foreign policies should be taken behind Parliament’s back, or that he had sought any system to reduce accountability to Parliament. Neither was it true that he had sought other countries’ interests over Malta’s own.

Answering questions by committee members, Mr Cachia Caruana opined that the cable’s mention of a “Malta” officer, rather than “Maltese”, could denote a member of the US Embassy. He had full faith in Major Xuereb and the lawyer who had accompanied him.