It’s the start of a new era for the Libyan government. Hot on the heels of Nicolas Sarkozy’s dramatic diplomatic take-over of the extradition of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of having infected 426 Libyan children with AIDS, the French government’s civil nuclear energy programme for Libya has brought into question Malta’s safety in the wake of a rush for the Jamarihiya’s vast energy resources.

As Britain and the US rush in to reap the rewards of rapprochement with the once-pariah state and its leader Muammar Ghaddafi, France is ploughing the Libyan desert for its vast energy resources and securing its place at the forefront of global attention. Sarkozy’s plans to build a nuclear reactor in Libya, although dismissed by proliferation experts as being tantamount to handing Ghaddafi a nuclear bomb, have come under fire. Germany’s minister of state for foreign affairs Gernot Erler, whose country is decommissioning nuclear power, has commented that “politically this is a problematic affair… Above all the risk of proliferation increases with every country using nuclear energy.”

But for Malta, facing the nearest nuclear reactor to Malta since Italy decommissioned its plants, the news raises the spectre of the dangers of nuclear energy since Chernobyl’s fallout in 1986 enveloped almost half of Europe.

Le French gatecrasher
For Sarkozy, it’s the ultimate coup for his young presidency. After a USD400m settlement brought about the commuting of the death sentence to life imprisonment for the nurses and the medic, the French president obtained their extradition a week later. Critics accuse the president and his wife Cecilia of grandstanding and taking the credit of an eight-year long diplomatic tussle for the release of the nurses; despite claims to the contrary, it is believed the ransom money has come from European governments, as claimed by high officials in Ghaddafi’s regime. The leader of the European Greens Dani Cohn-Bendit derided the French stunt as part of the distraught Sarkozy couple’s ‘family therapy’.

Behind this high price for freedom is Sarkozy’s tour de force inside the oil-rich Libyan market, where he is promoting commercial and political ties in a race with US and British companies. European leaders line up at the colonel’s tent to entreat Ghaddafi in return for the keys to unlock Libya’s vast energy reserves and tourism potential. Arms sales, banking privatisation and civil nuclear technology are all fertile grounds for French economic interests, despite Libya’s disastrous human rights record and inexistent democratic credentials.

Last Wednesday, Ghaddafi’s son Seif al Islam (literally, Sword of Islam), disclosed a EUR100 million arms contract with Paris for Milan anti-tank light infantry missiles, and that an extradition agreement was soon to be signed with the UK – who are procuring Libya with an anti-missile defence system – over the release of Lockerbie suspect Abdel basset Ali al Megrahi. On Friday the deal was confirmed by AFP: a EUR168 million Milan missile contract with arms firm MBDA, a subsidiary of EADS; and another EUR128 million contract with EADS for a transmission system. The negotiations had been going on for 18 months.

But it is crucial to understand the political game at hand for Ghaddafi. For years, the Libyan leader has attempted to come in from the cold, and the release of the health workers was key in improving relations with the international community. The European Commission welcomed it as a “new page” in Libyan relations; Sarkozy claimed his goal was to “help Libya rejoin the international community”.

What has truly been life-saving for Ghaddafi is sidestepping the American homing missile of regime change. The building blocks were there: disclosing arms shipments to the IRA in the 1980s, surrendering the Lockerbie suspects, paying USD3 billion in compensation to the families of the Lockerbie victims and the French UTA airliner his agents downed in 1989. But the masterstroke was revealing his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction to MI6 and the CIA in 2006, a move which saved him from becoming another Saddam, and which earlier this month culminated in the first US ambassador to Tripoli in 35 years.

Blind rush
The result of Libya’s return to the fold is that western investors want a slice of the Libyan gâteau, irrespectively of the lack of human rights and democratic credentials of the Jamarahiya.

Last week, one of Malta’s most vocal promoters of Libyan investment wrote in this newspaper of the need to intensify relations with Libya and to relax criticism of its treatment of African migrants. For 16 years as finance minister, the Nationalist MP John Dalli jointly chaired the Maltese-Libyan commission on political and economic relations. Since his return to the backbench, his former leadership rival Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi appears to have disregarded his offer for assistance in picking up the Libyan momentum while Britain and France take centre-stage.

Blinded by the prospect of the Libyan gold rush, Dalli played down the country’s mistreatment of over 2 million migrants to whom it had it opened its borders at the height of its pan-African aspirations. Amnesty International reports that foreigners arrested on suspicion of being irregular migrants reportedly suffer abuse in detention, such as beatings, and are collectively deported without access to a lawyer or an assessment of their individual cases – because Libya, Dalli forgot to mention, is not a signatory of the 1951 Convention on the Rights of Refugees and has not yet abolished the death penalty.

In the context of the disregard for Libya’s international credentials, the Franco-Libyan deal, in all its labyrinthine diplomacy, is a shock to the system of international cooperation. In the case of the release of the health workers, Ghaddafi appears to have secured international investment and an arms deal as a reward for Libya’s own misdeeds.

At best, the nuclear deal reeks of cynicism and a blind confidence in an undemocratic state. With the stage set for the dubious allocation of nuclear technology in a country whose weak and unstable infrastructure is no guarantee for the responsible handling of nuclear energy, what guarantees exist for safety in the Mediterranean, and Malta?

Nuclear? Pas merçi
The Maltese Green MP in the Italian Parliament, Arnold Cassola, was first on the scene to call the nuclear deal into question, tabling a parliamentary question to Italian foreign affairs minister Massimo D’Alema over whether he agreed that Italy should ask for round-table discussions between France, the European Commission, Libya and other concerned states over the prevention of nuclear accidents.

The Maltese Green party Alternattiva Demokratika has dubbed the nuclear deal as a “serious threat to the security of the Maltese Islands” and that France has “ignored the security concerns of the Maltese citizens and acted solely in the interests of the French nuclear industry. Sarkozy has proven himself to be more of a salesman rather than a statesman.”

AD chairperson Harry Vassallo claims Libya does not need nuclear energy to desalinate water, being already rich in fossil fuel resources. “The wisdom of supplying nuclear technology to a country that until 2003 was trying to develop nuclear weapons, is ruled by a dictator, and has been accused of numerous human rights abuses, is questionable.”

Equally critical is the French anti-nuclear advocacy group Sortir du Nucleaire (Get Out of Nuclear), which has dismissed the official reason for the reactor outright as a “deception” as the civilian and military uses of nuclear technology were “undistinguishable”.

“Delivering civilian nuclear energy to Libya would amount to helping the country, sooner or later, to acquire nuclear weapons,” it said, saying that if Libya wishes to diversify, it should logically give priority to solar energy: the country enjoys remarkable levels of sunshine all year long.

To Malta, whose Freeport is a transhipment hub for a third of world trade, the deal is problematic in terms of nuclear proliferation, putting its safety at the edge of France’s irresponsible export of nuclear technology, which in the past signed nuclear deals with the former shah of Iran, ex-Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and with South Africa during the apartheid era.

For the French abandonment and its rapid international endorsement of Libya ultimately betrays the diplomatic efforts aimed at getting Libya on a par with the peaceful aspirations of the international community. It’s a worrying precedent for the entire Mediterranean, which until Sarkozy’s election, was to become a region of priority for strengthening French influence.