A Foreign Ministry report has concluded that a Maltese diplomat who served in Tripoli in 1971 was not a mole for the British government.
The report, into the activities of Ives De Barro, was compiled by Cecilia Attard Pirotta, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The investigation was carried out after local press reports last April, based on documents made public by the British government, alleged that Mr De Barro had given information to the British government in the first months of the Mintoff government. Malta and the UK were at the time in dispute over compensation for British bases in Malta and the Maltese government had been seeking financial assistance from Libya as it threatened to close the bases in Malta.
In a memorandum to Foreign Minister Tonio Borg, tabled in Parliament today, Ms Attard Pirotta said that: “indeed, from all the information gathered, there was not much to report on any deals – secret or otherwise – between the Maltese and Libyan governments, revealed to a country, the UK, with which Malta was in dispute at the time”.
She quoted a September 1971 communication from 10 Downing Street that lamented that “the (British) Prime Minister has noticed from the telegrams that it has not so far been possible to obtain much information from Tripoli about Mr Mintoff’s discussions with Libyan ministers”.
In his defence, Mr De Barro told the Foreign Ministry that the local press reports amounted to “character assassination” and contained “an element of spin and sensationalism together with repetition of the cherry-picking”. He did not deny the substance of the information recorded in the file.
Ms Attard Pirotta said that “from the records released by the Public Records Office in the UK, it does not transpire that Mr De Barro had regular or systematic meetings with British Embassy staff in Tripoli.”
She concluded that “his depiction... as a mole or spy, is not correct”.
Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi said the government had accepted the conclusions and the recommendations made by Ms Attard Pirotta.