I regret to notice that in his article “Pact forces immigration onto political agenda” Raphael Vassallo repeats gross inaccuracies which local journalists, and sometimes ‘historians’, dish out about the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the CSCE, and Malta’s role in it as far as the Mediterranean is concerned. I prefer to put this down to carelessness or confusion created by the spin created by the then administration to obscure the true facts.
Vassallo wrote of the ‘Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe’ which, in fact, did not exist at the time. It was the ‘Conference’ and not the ‘Organisation’ until the 1994. He put the event to which he referred as happening in 1976 when, in fact, the conference was not in session during that year. Malta held up the conclusions of the conference in Helsinki (1973), Geneva (1975), Belgrade (1978) and Madrid (1983). On no one of these occasions did Malta, as claimed by Vassallo, “obtain a special reference to the Mediterranean region” as a result of “stalling a summit (of the CSCE) - a tactic employed to great effect by Labour PM Dom Mintoff”.
A reference to the Mediterranean had been obtained on all occasions quoted above prior to Malta’s notorious last minute stands, which did not obtain anything further of substance. The delay caused by Malta in Madrid lasted 53 days. I cannot find out to which CSCE session the two weeks mentioned by Vassallo refer.
The truth related to the CSCE, and Malta’s role in it up to 1984, is to be found in my memoirs “No, Honourable Minister”.

Evarist Saliba
Swieqi

Raphael Vassallo writes: I acknowledge the errors. Very generous of Dr Saliba to put them down to carelessness on my part, I must say. As for myself, I find it difficult not to put Dr Saliba’s own letter down to an attempt, somewhat carelessly revealed in his last sentence, to obtain a little free publicity for his book.