It was disturbing to read what the Irish prime minister had to say about a reference to Europe's Christian heritage in the EU Constitution. Bertie Ahern rushed out to Malta, last week, spent three hours on the island, and more or less ruled out the possibility of a compromise over this issue.

As he disturbingly put it: "The Maltese prime minister's views are not far away from my views on this matter. But, to be frank, I do not at this stage see a possibility of compromise on this issue."

What does this mean, that he and Dr Lawrence Gonzi agree there should be no reference, or that there should be one but they are up against it in the rest of Europe? Against Italy? Against Poland? Against France? Against England? Against Ireland? Against Germany?

We may as well know which of these countries, moulded out of Christianity, is contra, which in favour - and why.

A reference to Christianity will merely be stating a fact, unless there are those who believe that Christianity, never mind God, is a politically incorrect fact; in which case we had better look to our horses.

Better still, Dr Gonzi should hold firm. The vast majority of the Maltese electorate will be behind him when he does. The stand he takes on this issue will establish that we are equal partners with 24 other countries in the European Union.

One waits to see what our candidates for a seat in the European Parliament have to say on the subject. One may even decide to consider for election only those of the candidates who declare themselves in favour of a Constitution that nods its recognition of Europe's Christian character, however often Christians may have marred it.

The point is we will not be asked to leave should we make this stand. It may even be the case that we cannot be ignored. If not signing the document will mean that the Constitution as it is currently being presented for signature is held up, so be it. There is no rush. The EU can operate without it, as it has done for so long.

France and Germany are giving the impression that the Constitution is in the bag. Worse, that even if it does not remain there when England and other countries put the document to a referendum, as England for one intends to do, it will not matter if the Constitution is rejected by that electorate.

This smells of arrogance and Malta should not hesitate to provide an air-freshener to dispel the odour. We will be admired for sticking up for what we believe in. We have said often enough that our place is in Europe because we share its history and its heritage.

Mr Ahern currently occupies the Presidency of the EU. He told a press conference at the end of his stay that agreement on the Constitution was vital and needed to be wrapped up by the time the next IGC met, in June. Why?

The Italian Presidency laboured under the same deadline but missed it for one reason or another. Differences raised by Spain and Poland as to their voting strengths in the enlarged EU were one reason. These appear to have been ironed out in a sort of quid pro quo between Spain, Germany and France, following Spain's intention to withdraw its troops from Iraq.

The larger truth, though, is that contrary to Mr Ahern's assertion it is not vital that a Constitution should be in place by June and if there is to be one it should not necessarily be the copy that is on the table. Just because Mr Ahern is in a hurry, just because the Council is in a hurry, it is no reason for Malta to be as agitated.

Don't even think it, Mepa

Last Tuesday, the band of Caravaggio enthusiasts exceeded all expectations. Dr Keith Sciberras's talk, Caravaggio in Malta; reflections and discoveries, was sold out. The hall was packed and excited ticket sellers, overcome by the demand, tried to supply it.

The result was that for the first ten minutes, the lecturer and his audience were subjected to the irritating sight and sound of latecomers traipsing up a staircase and benches being carried to accommodate them. The organisers should not have allowed this.

For one thing it was rank bad manners on the part of the latecomers. For another, they should have had complete control over the booking. Fortunately, Keith Sciberras made up for this inconvenience both by his calmness and by his delivery of the story he had to tell.

The audience loved it. Thanks to him and the Italian, English and American speakers who are visiting us, Caravaggio is no longer a couple of masterpieces in the oratory of St John's. He is a man, a violent one at that, and a genius who would never have come to Malta, albeit for so short a time - his 'Maltese adventure', as Catherine Puglisi calls it - had he not murdered Ranuccio Tomassoni that night in Rome.

On a different tack, Caravaggio watchers will have noticed when they went to the Impossible Exhibition that the splendid waterfront, already ravaged by a glass and concrete block of apartments at the far end, may yet be mutilated again.

I have already referred in this column to the display board outside the empty site next to the Casino Venezia. Ominously, it shows what I take to be the developers' idea for a hotel. I say ominously because the impression given is that when it is translated into a building it will distort the magnificent façades across the road from the yacht marina.

Should Mepa allow this to happen, autonomous body or no, I trust the prime minister Gonzi will take the matter before parliament and ask the House to overturn any such decision. Dr Gonzi has gone on record to state his government's energetic intention to protect the environment. I believe he means it.

The outcome of any application for the hotel on the Vittoriosa waterfront, and any permission by Mepa for an obscene intrusion, will provide him with an important test case. I am certain he will pass it.

Another test case, a more difficult one, is the Mnajdra landfill site. Dr Gonzi is also on record, here. He will switch from Mnajdra if technical experts persuade him that harm will befall the temples. Which experts? There are those who argue, Heritage Malta and Din l-Art Helwa among them, that even if only a possibility of damage exists, the safety and integrity of the temple should be given priority over the landfill proposition.

Others say that there will be no impairment, the quarries to be used will be rehabilitated and when the landfill has been filled, landscaping will improve the area - as of course it would.

The problem is how to measure any possibility of degradation. The answer cannot properly be given by those in favour or against the landfill being built in the area. Bring in Unesco for an independent judgment.

CNI's absurdity

Kofi Annan, secretary-general at the United Nations, may by now have received a "solemn" declaration from a fellow secretary-general in Malta. The UNO and the CNI are now in direct contact. Pity Mr Annan, who has a handsome price on his head courtesy of you know who. It seems he must now follow the turgid solemnity of a document sent to him by Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.

Not so apparently, two decisions taken by the Maltese electorate in a referendum and in a general election have challenged the good doctor and his handful of friends to embark on a no doubt solemn attempt to regain Malta's independence after the European Union had snatched this away from us. Of such is the kingdom of failed politicians.

CNI met for its annual meeting, last Sunday. Pity Mr Annan, who has been asked to wrestle with a new problem when his plate is full, his digestion suspicious and his humour nowhere near its best. Not only, Dr Mifsud Bonnici placed on the shoulders of the secretary-general the burden of passing on CNI's message to each member of the UN. Still, good to know there is someone who is fighting to regain our lost independence. Not since Dr Sant wrote to European chancelleries in 1998 to declare the elected government of Dr Fenech Adami "illegitimate" has somebody seen fit to challenge the height of that absurdity. As to who the winner is, the jury is still out.

A moral equivalence?

Saddam Hussein's army is in Kuwait. An intrepid Iraqi photographer takes a dozen pictures and videos of Kuwaiti civilians being tortured, mutilated, in plain terms killed inside a prison. They are printed in the Iraqi press and shown on Iraqi television. There is an outcry in the Arab world.

In response, the Iraqi president appears on television and apologises. The Iraqi press does not consider this to be good enough. Saddam Hussein orders an investigation. The Iraqi Senate and the Iraqi Congress hold an inquiry and summon the Iraqi High Command and the Iraqi defence minister, as well as Iraqi intelligence to appear and to give evidence before both Houses. These are subsequently grilled. You get my drift.

What would never happen anywhere in the world, except England, is happening in the United States. Senators and congressmen from the Republican and Democrat parties have been grilling Donald Rumsfeld and anybody else they can lay their hands on to see just how far up the command the responsibility lies for the appalling and revolting actions that took place in the dreaded prison Abu Ghraib. The Democrats fervently hope it will lead to Mr Rumsfeld.

The hearings are being televised and can be seen and heard across the globe. We have the ultimate in openness and transparency, and still there are those in the West, loony lefties and woolly liberals (Pinter, Pilger, et al) who argue that a moral equivalence exists between the US and its current enemy.

As if to confirm this equivalence, an American civilian is decapitated in front of a camera as a reprisal for the humiliation heaped on Iraqi prisoners by soldier guards, including the notorious, smiling, finger-pointing American woman-soldier, England.

But what about the senators? Most of them were courteous to a fault. Many of them were incisive, sincere in their line of questioning, seriously inquisitive. Their questions reverberated around the world, as did the answers of the Secretary of State, the Chief of Staff, General Richard B. Myers, the men in intelligence, the investigating general who bravely revealed the evil transgressions of American prison guards. Iraqis were watching; Bin Laden, too. So this is how they do things?

Democrat Senator Edward Kennedy is the hero who left a young woman, with whom he had been partying, trapped in a car he was driving when this went over a bridge into the murky waters at Chappaquidick. It took him the best part of five or six hours before he reported the fatal accident.

Yet, the brother of the man who led the US into the Vietnam war, cited moral integrity (as did Senator Hillary Rodham Carter) and hurled the Vietnam debacle at Mr Rumsfeld - and the American electorate. It is, after all, election year. The nuanced Mr William Kerry hopes to make it to the White House. Senator Kennedy is giving him his full support.

Mr Kennedy took to mentioning the Vietnam quagmire soon after a few reverses occurred in Iraq as if this would help the American soldiers on the ground and rally them to the cause for which they were fighting. He knew full well, or should have known, that the reverse of this was what he risked accomplishing. Talk of moral integrity should have, but resolutely did not, stick in his throat.

Another senator from the ranks of the Democrats questioned General Myers so aggressively that had the chairman of the investigating committee not intervened to ask that the witness be allowed time to respond, one suspected that the senator's next remark would have been: "Ve have vays of making you talk."

The right to be outraged

Some time later - or was it the same day? - President George W. Bush emerged from the offices of the Pentagon, declared his faith in Secretary of State Rumsfeld, deplored once more the degrading behaviour of those men and women who had dishonoured the American Army, declared his pride in being the commander-in-chief of that army and made clear his resolution that the operation would be seen through. It was what his soldiers wanted to hear but not, it seemed, what Sky News was too happy with.

Even while the President spoke, Rupert Murdoch's station intruded with pictures of the Iraqi prisoners being tortured or humiliated; pictures, I do not need to add but will, that had been broadcast time without number for two or three days and nights. That said something about the media, too. Yet, how those who spell 'hate' as a-m-e-r-i-c-a must have chortled as this obscene episode played itself out.

On the British side, 'torture' photographs that appeared in Piers Morgan's newspaper (the Daily Mirror) are now known to have been faked. An unrepentant Morgan was asserting, last week, that even if they turned out not to be false (but they were presented to the Mirror readership as authentic) they were a close illustration of what happened. This is not what he said when questions were first raised about the authenticity of those photographs. If they turned out to be bogus, he had then said, he "would have to consider his position very seriously".

Mirror readers woke up yesterday to learn what most already knew. The proprietors admitted the photographs were a hoax and sacked the man. It is surely not enough. Parents of soldiers in Iraq should initiate criminal proceedings against him. "Thugs betray the real heroes" ran the headline when the Mirror's "exclusive" hit the stands. Quite.

The best thing I read on a specific angle of this whole affair, apart from Sir Jeremy Greenstock's calm and brilliant contribution to The Economist (by invitation), was the heading Barbara Amiel gave to an article she submitted to the Daily Telegraph. The coalition forces "were fighting for the right to be outraged at those photographs".