Diplomat Evarist Saliba presents his memoirs, in which he claims Labour’s 1996 election victory was aided by the CIA, to Eddie Fenech Adami
Labour leader Alfred Sant yesterday dismissed the allegations made by former senior diplomat Evarist Saliba that he had won the 1996 elections with the help of the US Central Intelligence Agency as “bullshit”.
In his book of memoirs called ‘No, Honourable Minister’ launched last November, Saliba alleges that he was told by a very high PN official that Sant had won the general election with the help of the American secret service.
Saliba repeated his incredible claims in Monday’s Bondiplus on the national broadcaster, although he refused to name his source, adding only that he “trusted the very high PN official 100 per cent”.
“I don’t have the slightest doubt (about his credibility),” Saliba said as the producers put on a big screen “Alfred Sant and the CIA?” to the backdrop in the studio.
But Sant yesterday was brusquely dismissive of Saliba’s allegations.
“I have no time for this bullshit,” he said when called at his private residence.
Asked whether he had read Saliba’s memoirs, Sant said: “Absolutely not.”
80-year-old Saliba is known to have been a close collaborator of the PN while he was heading the Foreign Service. He eventually fell out with former foreign minister Alex Sciberras Trigona.
Saliba recounted how a very high PN official had allegedly told him that an American industrialist who was on his way to Malta had met a CIA operative in the US Embassy in Rome.
The agent had allegedly remarked that the CIA had helped Sant win the 1996 election.
According to Saliba, the American businessman was so shocked by the claims that he had told a very high PN official about them.
Yet the lightness with which Saliba’s claims have been treated may be an indication of his lack of credibility in the opposing camp, although his book carries the endorsement of President Eddie Fenech Adami and historian Joseph Pirotta.
His claims also resonate with other allegations made by Dom Mintoff in the 1998 fallout with Alfred Sant, when he claimed that the Labour proposal to cede sovereignty over Fort St Angelo to the Knights of St John could have been a pretext for the Americans to use the area for military reasons.
Yet Sant had immediately pulled out of the Partnership for Peace upon his election in line with his electoral pledge to remove Malta from the NATO programme within 24 hours.
On Monday’s programme, Saliba found it hard to explain why the CIA would back Sant to win the election. He said the Americans would have probably backed Labour because they would never forgive the Nationalist administration for freeing Ali Rezaq – the only terrorist to survive in the 1985 EgyptAir hijack.
He added the Americans “must have supposed” that a Labour government would be more reliable than the Nationalist administration, which had declared sympathies with the Palestinian Authority.
Attempts to get Spiteri’s comments yesterday proved futile.
Although the Opposition leader spent years studying in Boston, where he got his MBA and PhD in Business Administration from Harvard, his only known link to the US during the 1996 election was through the hiring of Phil Noble – the American political consultant credited with the successful Labour campaign.
Saliba’s book of memoirs was also presented to President Eddie Fenech Adami at the end of November.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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