The government is monitoring the situation in Libya “hour to hour”, Foreign Minister George Vella said this evening.

Speaking during a debate on a motion moved by the Opposition on the situation in Libya, he said that when the government last week organised a flight from Mitiga in a 75-seat aircraft offering the 250 or so Maltese in Libya to leave, only 52 Maltese expressed an interest in using the service. The other seats were filled by foreigners.

When they were offered a second opportunity, only 16 expressed an interest in taking it up.

Dr Vella said the situation in Libya was very fluid and complex as many interests and many armed people were involved.

The government, he said, was closely monitoring the situation and in September, when situation was not so acute, it set up a crisis centre. It also advised against travel to Libya unless essential and for extreme caution to be exercised. Since July 15 the advice has been to avoid all travel to Libya.

In April, the government set up an operations unit and 550 hours of work were logged to date, a total of 3,041 telephone calls were made and 534 were received. The government retained and established contact with all Maltese in Libya it knew about.

Dr Vella said the Maltese ambassador had come to Malta for an ambassador’s meeting and got stuck here because the airport in Tripoli closed.

He could only return on July 20 via Tunisia. While in Malta, he spent most of his time in the operations unit, giving all assistance necessary.

At the consulate in Tripoli, all staff where committed to help as necessary. The mission in Libya was particular especially because of the many Libyans who wanted a visa to go to Europe.

The team was small and the demand was big and visa requests had to be scrutinised well especially because of the dangerous elements infiltrating the country. This created a backlog which led to even more pressure.

Dr Vella said that, in spite of this, he advised the staff at the consulate to leave when the situation worsened. For while it was true that the interests of the Maltese in Libya had to be safeguarded, priority had to be given to the people's safety.

Referring to allegations on fuel smuggling, he said that both the Maltese and Libyan government were working together and sharing information for action to be taken to stop any illegal activity.

Dr Vella said Malta was efforts were constantly made by Malta in international fora to bring Libya up in debates in spite of the international situation which overshadowed the situation.

Dr Vella said that EU states heads of missions in Tripoli met regularly and there was an understanding for a common decision about evacuation to be taken when and if it came to this.

Meetings were held daily in Malta to prepare for any possible evacuations including of people of other nationalities.

The minister said he was willing to give the Opposition spokesman all the information he needed, including that which could not be made public.

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