The Prime Minister's announcement that Malta would not allow its facilities to be used as part of the military action to enforce Resolution 1973 raised quite a few hackles and gave rise to quite a few howls.

Let me put myself on record straight away: I would have like to have seen my country take its place amongst the actively anti-Gaddafi states and I was, and remain, uncomfortable at the announcement made. To be fair, it has been made clear enough that Malta believes that the Libyan people should be allowed to achieve their aspirations and that the thug Gaddafi has to go, but the PM's announcement diluted the message slightly.

But it might perhaps be appropriate to put things in perspective, before we run away with the idea that Malta will start to be seen as a colony of Gaddafi or something ludicrous like that by the rest of the world.

The nations active in enforcing Resolution 1973 haven't really been put out by the fact that Malta is not participating directly.

To start with, we don't, actually, have any assets to bring to bear and, to be going on, using Malta as a base is a non-starter, given that fully-equipped bases are available minutes away. This isn't a case of doing what we did so well during the evacuation, moving masses of people through the port and airport, but a matter of servicing a very high-tech operation, which can't be done here.

So the other countries don't really mind that we're not participating, because we wouldn't make a jot of difference - and it's not as if Dr KMB was about to tip the thug Gaddafi off about what is flying through our airspace, so that's not a problem either.

Meaning that the visceral reaction we all had was based on something else, namely our distaste with Gaddafi and his vicious regime, coupled with our horror of being reminded of the eagerness with which Mintoff and his own regime got into bed with the thug.

We were also reminded of the circumstances which put into place the neutrality provisions of the Constitution, for all that they don't apply in the current circumstances, which added to our collective discomfort with the position taken by the Government.

I'd still have preferred us to be in, though.