I read with interest the obituary about Susanna Agnelli (May 19), contributed by my friend Salvinu Busuttil. I enjoyed reading about things I was not aware of at the time of INIA's establishment in Malta as I had left our mission in New York in 1984. But every ending has a beginning and in this case it goes back to 1968.
In that year, the national ministers for social affairs met at the UN headquarters in New York to discuss social policy matters. At the time, the Maltese Minister for Social Affairs was President Emeritus Ċensu Tabone and it was he who attended the meeting. While there, Arvid Pardo, the Maltese representative to the UN, broached the idea of an item dealing with the elderly to be included in the UN General Assembly's agenda. Dr Tabone promptly agreed and promised Dr Pardo he would help as best he could. Thus, an idea was born.
Events, however, proved more difficult than anticipated. I believe the first time the item appeared on the General Assembly agenda was in 1969 when Dr Pardo was completely immersed in the seabed initiative and found no time to prepare himself well for its presentation in the Third (Social and Humanitarian) Committee. The same thing happened in 1970 and, by the time the General Assembly met in September 1971, Dr Pardo was out of office.
Not long after the new Administration in Malta took over, the Maltese mission in New York received instructions to stop all initiatives at the UN, pending a review of them by the new authorities. This included the seabed initiative even as its committee, of which Malta held the rapporteurship, was about to meet in Geneva. In fact, because of its urgency, a decision was quickly taken both in favour of attending the committee and to hold on to the office of rapporteur. The item on the elderly, which would have been debated sometime in October, seemed, in June, to be too far away to merit urgent treatment.
In mid-September, the new permanent representative, Ambassador Joe Attard Kingswell, visited New York both to present his credentials to the Secretary-General of the UN and to attend the General Assembly. The first thing he did was meet the mission staff to review the initiatives the mission was involved in. After listening to the history of the item, he decided there and then that the initiative should be pursued and he formally introduced it in the Third Committee a few weeks later.
Initially, the progress was laborious and for the first two years it was not easy to find co-sponsors. As in the case of the seabed initiative, suspicions went round about the ostensibly humanitarian Maltese intentions and some spread the word that we were acting on behalf of commercial interests of some industrialised countries. An African delegate sitting next to another from a developed country remarked to him: "What are you trying to do, install elevators in our huts?"
But suddenly a visible change could be noticed. By the fourth year, delegates from all geographical groups were falling over each other to join the co-sponsors' list. After 1977, under the Carter Administration, mainly because of a personal interest shown by his wife Rosalynn and that of an elderly senator, an avalanche of keen interest was generated so that, by 1982, the General Assembly was able to convene in Vienna the World Assembly on Aging, with Malta being given the important office of chairman of the committee entrusted with the drafting of the Vienna Plan of Action, which is the blueprint for international action in the field of aging.
A footnote to the above also has some historical interest. When the results of the 1987 elections were known and the PN organised a huge mass meeting on the Granaries to celebrate its success, Eddie Fenech Adami addressed the meeting. Midway through it, someone passed him a paper, which the new Prime Minister read to the crowd. It was a telegram informing the government that INIA would be located in Malta. Obviously, the newly-elected party could claim no kudos for the happy news but the comment was that that message would be taken as a happy augury for the days to come.
This contribution, inspired by an obituary, is only intended to give honour where honour is due. Had it not been for the prompt decision by Mr Attard Kingswell in 1971, we would not have been here today to tell this success story. In 1971, the item was as good as dead. It was he who revived it.