The news about the alleged Russian activity through the internet to influence political developments in the US and the alleged indiscrete behaviour of Donald Trump during a visit to Russia before he became President, as well as the claim by Jan Sarkocy, a former Czechoslovak spy, posing as a diplomat in London in the late 1980s, that Jeremy Corbyn, whom he described as “an honest but stupid man”, was a source of information for him, led me to reminisce on experiences I have had with Russian/Soviet KGB officers and their contacts.
As a newly-recruited Maltese diplomat, getting practical experience of running an embassy in an Arab country at the British Embassy in Damascus, following a one-year course in Oxford (1965-66), I spent one week as the guest of the Head of Chancery who had a complete collection of the books by Ian Fleming on the fictional spy, 007 James Bond. It was fiction based on experience but still, basically, fiction. The Head of Chancery, First Secretary Harold Walker, who was again my host for lunch at his club in London in 2010, discussed the matter with me light-heartedly.
As an aside, by that time this British diplomat was known as Sir Harold Berners Walker KCMG, former ambassador to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and finally Iraq (1990-91). He had just returned from a visit to Malta with a group of members of the Order of St Michael and St George who had participated in the celebrations of Armistice Day.
I had supplied him with photographs of two stained-glass windows in the chapel in the former King George V Hospital, in Floriana, which commemorated two half-brothers of his, both naval officers lost in action during World War II. The windows had been donated by his mother and he was pleased to see they were still in place.
Bond’s romantic exploits took a more realistic aspect during a UN meeting in Geneva. I will not reveal the time and subject of the meting so as not to lead to speculation on the identity of the person concerned. The subject under discussion could hit Malta adversely and a specialist civil service officer, not on the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came over to help but this was only after he had visited Moscow on other official business.
The Geneva meeting was stressful and, one evening, we relaxed over a drink. We had known each other well before he had joined the general civil service and I the diplomatic service. I asked him about Moscow as a diversion and he relaxed to the extent of letting down his guard.
Russian hospitality was superb. It went beyond good meals and extended to good female company. I asked him whether he was sure his hosts had not recorded what they had provided and the stressed look came back to his face. For the record, through circumstances that had nothing to do with his professional work, he never reached the merited levels in the civil service that could have been exploited by unfriendly sources.
My next brush came during the third meeting of UN Conference on Trade and Development in Santiago de Chile in 1972, though I was not fully aware of its nature at the time. I had recommended to my ministry that Malta should attend but the ministry dealing with trade disagreed. Though they had attended the previous meeting in New Delhi they were not ready to agree that I go to Chile, especially since Dom Mintoff, now prime minister, had clamped down on “holidays abroad” at government expense. What they had overlooked was that Mintoff was also the Minister of Foreign Affairs and he had been left out of the picture.
Russian hospitality was superb, going beyond good meals and extending to good female company
An Oxford-qualified economist who was a consultant to the President of Chile, Salvador Allende, going by the name of Ann Zammit, contacted Mintoff directly to protest our absence and Mintoff phoned me personally to tell me off. He was furious to learn that I had recommended attendance and that this was turned down without him being consulted. The clash turned out to have the opposite effect. Mintoff entrusted me to go ahead.
Ann Zammit was the widow of Gerry Zammit who was studying in Oxford at the same time as she was. When I met her in Chile I did not know this and she introduced me to her husband who was British and not a Zammit. I came to know through a British diplomat I knew in Geneva that he was Richard Gott, a journalist from The Guardian, and they could not understand why we had registered her as “Mrs Zammit” and not “Mrs Gott”.
My meeting with Gott did not go as planned. He presented me with the draft of a speech I had to give. I pointed out that I had already written mine and had enough copies to give to the interpreters. I asked if his draft had been cleared by Mintoff. It was not and I did not trust the man from then on.
During the conference he became prominent as the organiser of a boycott by journalists on the proceedings, unless we agreed to pass a resolution condemning the US for the blockade of Haiphong. The conference ignored him. Decades later he was outed as being in the pay of the Soviet government.
My next encounters were during the years-long Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Following his satisfaction with the way I handled the Unctad conference, Mintoff entrusted me with representing Malta in the CSCE.
From the early preparatory talks in Helsinki, Malta clashed with the USSR on our insistence on introducing a Mediterranean dimension in the conference. The Soviet delegation was nominally headed by the Soviet ambassador to the host country but the chief negotiator was Lev Isaakovich Mendelevich, whom, we all knew, was a colonel in the Soviet secret service, the KGB. I had encounters with him and his successor in Belgrade and Madrid, Sergei Kondrachev, both prominent members of the KGB.
The Soviet side had come to know me quite well and our relations were correct. It was different with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Both in Helsinki and Belgrade, the KGB colonels invited me to a lunch/dinner with no other guests. There was no doubt that everything we said was being recorded but there were no attempts at entrapment. They were occasions at a genuine exchange of views or, rather, at the Soviet side seeking to understand what Malta was after.
I visited Russia twice. The first time was during the Helsinki phase of the CSCE when diplomats at the conference were invited to see Leningrad. The guide of my group had been to Malta and she went out of her way to show me items of Czar Paul as the Grandmaster of the Order of the Knights of Malta. She was professional all the time. Otherwise, I had the feeling of being watched constantly.
The second visit was to Moscow when I served as adviser on foreign affairs to Eddie Fenech Adami, then prime minister, in the early 1990s. I was the guest of the Soviet government and I had left the hotel arrangements in the hands of our embassy. It was much better than the one in Leningrad but, on getting out of the lift, I met the usual figure of a matron sitting at her desk, noting who goes in or out and at what time.
My first night’s sleep was interrupted by a telephone call. I was tired and I assured the male caller I was fine and I did not need anything else.
I was woken up a second time, this time by a gentle female voice. James Bond, Agent 007, came to mind. I assumed calm control, being firm but not rude, making it clear that what I wanted was a rest and not to be woken up once again. My wish was respected.
The embassy staff was not surprised at my experience.
Evarist Saliba was a member of the Maltese Diplomatic Service between 1965 and 2003.