The risk of drowning hundreds of boat people were facing was a direct consequence of a lack of action by the international community, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said today.

“Every night I get calls from the Armed Forces informing me of hundreds of boat people at risk of drowning… I feel that this is a direct consequence of a lack of action by the international community. Innocent people are suffering because of indifference,” he said.

Dr Muscat was speaking in New York during a meeting called by UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon to discuss the situation in Libya.

He said it was not acceptable for militia to continue holding towns hostages against the absolute will of the majority of civilians and insisted that laws which prevented people from contributing to peace and enter public life did not make sense if stability was really wanted in Libya.

Dr Muscat said it was in this context that the UN had an important role to play for Libya to again become a safe country. The UN had to be ready to answer to all calls for an intervention. Interventions, he said, did not mean more attacks but more assistance for the different factions to be brought around a table and giving the country’s legitimate armed forces the necessary support.

The Prime Minister said that the chaotic situation in Libya was being pushed forward by interests which tried to give the impression they were out of the scene but were actually involved in a very active manner.

He insisted that the time had come for such hypocrisy to come to an end. Malta, he said, was making its voice heard at the highest levels of the international community because it was experiencing the situation in Libya directly.

“We feel families’ pain, even by Maltese relatives in Libya. We consider Libyans our siblings,” he said.

The situation in Libya, he said,  was also leading to big waves of illegal migration to Europe.

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