CNI seeking to bring Mintoff into anti-EU membership campaign

Former prime minister Dom Mintoff, who publicly regretted anointing Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici as his successor to lead the Labour Party, is being asked by Dr Mifsud Bonnici to go to Ireland at the weekend to campaign against Ireland's ratification of the Nice Treaty.

Mr Mintoff, very typically of him, is refusing to represent anyone but himself if he does go to Ireland.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici, chairman of the anti-EU membership Campaign for National Indepedence told a news conference yesterday that if Mr Mintoff accepted to take part in a manifestation organised by the National Platform of Ireland, he would be representing a faction parallel to the CNI against EU membership.

Ireland is to hold a second referendum in October to ratify the Nice treaty which, if again given the thumbs down, could jeopardise the enlargement process.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici would not say whether the role being given to Mr Mintoff, made the scapegoat for the Labour government's downfall in 1998, could create tension among CNI's members.

Should Mr Mintoff decline to go to Ireland, Dr Mifsud Bonnici himself would go.

"There will be developments. This does not mean that Mr Mintoff would form part of the CNI, but he will take an active part in a campaign against the government's negotiations," Dr Mifsud Bonnici said.

What the EU was proposing, he said, was nothing more than integration into a bigger bloc and it was therefore in everybody's interest to object to it.

When it was pointed out that Mr Mintoff himself had proposed integration with Britain in 1956, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said the circumstances in Malta at the time were different.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici dedicated the majority of his comments to lash out at EU commissioner for enlargement Gunther Verheugen, following an interview carried with him in The Times last Saturday.

"Through his interview, Verheugen threatened, blackmailed and insulted the country," the CNI leader charged.

Mr Verheugen had given one clear message through his comments - either do as the EU pleases or else suffer the consequences, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said.

No foreign official should pontificate in such a manner over another country's future in the way Mr Verheugen did, he said.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici objected in particular to comments made by Mr Verheugen that Malta would be marginalised if it voted against membership, or that Malta risked becoming a small island between Europe and Africa with no influence or vote.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici said he feared the EU would adopt a hostile attitude towards Malta if Malta decided against membership.

He criticised Economic Services Minister Josef Bonnici who used Mr Verheugen's interview as a means to attack the opposition.

He called upon the public to look at neighbouring Sicily, which was facing a water problem, to realise that the EU did not solve its members' problems.

Dr Mifsud Bonnici revealed that Mario Cutajar, who until recently held the post of General Workers' Union deputy general secretary, had accepted to give the CNI a helping hand.

He claimed that hunters, fishing, and agriculture organisations were also against EU membership.

He urged reporters to realise that though former prominent Nationalists such as Victor Ragonesi, Mario Felice and Josie Muscat had not accepted to join the CNI after being approached, they had not declared that they were in favour of membership.

"Victor Ragonesi and Mario Felice especially were against integration in the past, so I can't imagine them to be in favour of it in 2002," he said.