Former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami had told US President George H Bush he would not be welcome for the historic 1989 summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev unless he paid an official courtesy call to Auberge de Castille.
Arrangements were underway for the meeting – the first between the two Cold War rivals after the collapse of the Berlin wall – but Dr Fenech Adami was insistent that both leaders should visit the Maltese Prime Minister upon their arrival.
The summit was a golden opportunity for the new Nationalist administration to broadcast to the world that Malta was no longer Dom Mintoff’s non-aligned island state of the 1970s.
However, the White House became wary of too much interaction with the government on Maltese soil (the summit took place aboard US and Russian warships in Maltese waters) because of concerns there might be “hostile demonstrations” in light of the Labour Party’s opposition to the meeting.
Speaking during an interview on the Nationalist Party’s radio 101 yesterday, Dr Fenech Adami said he had received a call from Mr Bush’s National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, in which he expressed this concern and said the President was reluctant to make the courtesy visit.
Dr Fenech Adami protested, telling him the President would not be welcome if he refused.
General Scowcroft asked for security assurances and was given them, but then put Mr Bush on the line.
“I told him it is unacceptable that you come to Malta and not make a courtesy call on the Prime Minister, I told him, you will not be welcome,” Dr Fenech Adami recalled.
Mr Bush did not argue and said he would take Dr Fenech Adami’s word about the security concerns. The rest is history.
About the summit, Dr Fenech Adami said the meeting was providential, because it helped place Malta once more at the centre of history.
“It placed us at the centre of news, the world over.
“Suddenly, overnight the superpowers, as we called them back then, were going to meet in Malta and this obviously gave us an enormous boost,” he said.
It was two years after the Nationalist Party returned to power in the historic 1987 election and the summit helped with the government’s long term goal of closer cooperation with the then European Economic Community.
Dr Fenech Adami spoke at length about the PN’s European project yesterday, which it developed as a practical alternative to Dom Mintoff’s non-aligned policy and centrally planned economic model.
Speaking about more recent events, he said the PN’s defeat at the 1996 election proved to be a setback for Malta’s negotiations for membership with the EU, particularly as European leaders were sceptical about Malta’s real desire to join after the Nationalists returned to power in 1998.
However, Dr Fenech Adami praised the “wise” choice by then Labour leader Alfred Sant to freeze Malta’s application to join rather than withdraw it.
Labour had a mandate to withdraw Malta’s application after making it a main electoral pledge but did not, giving the 1998 Nationalist government the option to argue that negotiations should continue from where they had left.