Italian, Libyan foreign ministers meeting in Malta on Dec 5

The foreign ministers of Italy, Libya and Malta are to meet on December 5 to discuss illegal immigration and oil exploration in the waters between the three countries.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini and Libyan Foreign Minister Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgem will be coming to Malta at the invitation of Foreign Minister Tonio Borg.

Dr Borg said in Parliament this morning that migration and oil exploration had been among the priorities of his ministry in the past few months. He pointed out that this was the first time that concrete proposals had been made on the delineation of the waters for oil exploration purposes, adding that failure of talks on this subject could see the countries concerned taking their case to the International Court of Justice.

Dr Borg also announced that an agreement reached with Spain last July would come into force in a few weeks’ time when Maltese visa officers would start working in the Spanish embassies in Montenegro and Algeria.

He confirmed that Malta had decided to keep its Copenhagen embassy open, reversing a previous decision to close it. An embassy would also be opened in Warsaw. Malta and Cyprus had also identified a building which would serve as their joint office in Ramallah while Cyprus would allocate space in its own embassy in Tel Aviv for Malta. Malta was also to open a consular office in Istanbul.

When he spoke on illegal immigration, Dr Borg said Malta had put illegal immigration on the agenda of the EU. The achievement of the recently-signed Immigration Pact was that it included burden sharing. This had to be voluntary because one could not force sovereign states to take migrants. Nonetheless, several states had taken migrants from Malta and talks were in an advanced stage for this process to continue.

Dr Borg said he was not against holding a discussion on whether Malta should continue to form part of Frontex, the EU border control agency, although he felt Malta should.

The minister also disclosed that an investment guarantee agreement was being discussed between Malta and China.

He also noted the opposition’s comments on holding a discussion on a definition of neutrality, and insisted that Malta’s membership of Partnership for Peace did not violate neutrality – in the same way as Switzerland’s membership did not disclose its own neutrality.

When he referred to the stalled Lisbon Treaty, Dr Borg said Ireland had played by the rules and the principles of unanimity needed to be respected. Ireland should not be rushed into holding a second referendum lest the worst thing happened – a second rejection of the treaty.