Former Prime Minister Alfred Sant has described ex-US President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday aged 100, as friendly and a good listener while reflecting on the former president's visit to Malta in 1997.
Carter served as US president from 1977 to 1981 and bears the distinction of being his nation's longest-lived former leader.
In a post on his website The Carter Center, the late former US president described his visit to Malta as “surprisingly interesting and delightful” and referenced a meeting with Sant – then Prime Minister – and late former president Ċensu Tabone.
Reflecting on that meeting, Sant described how he met Carter, his late wife Rosalynn and their second son James Earl "Chip" Carter III – often abbreviated to just ‘Chip’ - for dinner at Girgenti Palace before taking them on a short walk around Mdina.
Describing Carter and wife as “very relaxed and affable” Sant said the former president had been “curious about Malta,” calling him a "very good listener, not least regarding our position on the EU and NATO.”
"But I got the impression he was not so familiar with European matters," he said.
Noting Carter had been ready to discuss “internationally very salient matters,” Sant said about the late president’s views on the Arab–Israeli conflict that he had been "very frank and balanced in his judgements, though convinced a peaceful way out could be found.”
That year saw a string of terrorist attacks on Israel and a failed assassination attempt against key Hamas figure Khaled Meshaal – who earlier this year was tipped to become the organisation’s leader following the killing of Ismail Haniyeh – by Mossad agents in Jordan.
During his presidency, Carter brokered a peace deal between Israel and Egypt dubbed the Camp David Accords.
“He [Carter] was still involved in mediation efforts and explained how they were being organised,” said Sant, adding the late president had similarly been “deeply concerned” about conflicts in Africa, "trying to arrange ceasefires and peace conferences.”
“Most of the time he focused on the killings and hardships that ‘ordinary’ people were experiencing, rather than on the strategic and tactical aspect of issues,” said Sant. “Which I found really interesting and useful, not least because it was not so usual to find top politicians and ex-politicians discussing matters in this way.”
Sant noted he had been studying in the US during Carter’s presidency, and while not in politics at the time remembers that period as one where there had been “admiration” for America in Maltese circles.
“A number of times, then Prime Minister [Dom] Mintoff told me he was keen to have American business in Malta... and asked me to get US industrialists to come to Malta,” he said.
Sant described Carter’s style as “more laid back, homely, and ‘rural’” than some of his predecessors, but noted it seemed the “WASPs [White Anglo-Saxon Protestants] in the media and academia looked down upon him – not least because he was a teacher in the Catechism Sunday classes of his church”.
He added a “major problem for Carter was caused by the blind allegiance of those same elites to the Shah of Iran... [who] never suspected how fragile the Shah [Iran's last monarch] was.”
Carter's wife Rosalynn died in November last year. The couple are survived by their four children.