Mur Lura
Speech by H.E. Prof. Guido de Marco, President of Malta – "Malta – Bridging Europe's Mediterranean Dimension" – at the European Union Representative Office – Berlin - Thursday 8th November, 2001
08/11/2001
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There are moments in the life of individuals, peoples and nations, which are history. We are passing through such a moment.
11th of September has created a scar on humanity which will take a long time to heal. The civilized world is shocked.
Terrorism is a scourge of our times. We have been living with it, many have been the victims. I remember addressing the first plenary meeting of the 45th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 18th September 1990. I had just been elected President of the General Assembly. On that occasion, I raised the issue of terrorism. My words then are fully applicable today:
"Terrorism is not the poor man's war. It is not even a strategy for a purpose. Still less can it ever coincide with an ideal. Terrorism is the murder of the innocent. It is an act of the coward.
No civilized society can accept terrorism in its midst, or the protection of terrorists. The world has to be alive to the present and perhaps even more to future dangers of any terrorist expansion. We are all in the forefront – politicians and diplomats, women at the market place and children at school, innocent travelers and by-standers. There is no total protection against terrorism. There is only an implacable rejection of it."
I stand by what I said eleven years ago in New York when the Twin Towers were still adding harmony to the beautiful skyline of that city.
We have witnessed throughout these years how terrorism has tried to link itself up to a cause. My country, at the centre of the Mediterranean, European in its culture and formation, Mediterranean in its history, has been a living witness to the great contradiction of this inland sea where peace on earth was promised and religious wars were waged, where millions live and die in poverty, in the midst of significant human and energy resources, both tapped and untapped.
We in Malta, from our watch-tower, have been witnessing intolerant fundamentalism, economic deprivation, illegal migration, ethnic friction, demographic explosion, environmental degradation, and outright conflict.
We are not the sole witnesses. But because of our history and our past, we are possibly those who can watch events with greatest objectivity. The history of Malta is one where, in spite of successive dominations, we have managed to build ourselves our own identity, our own nation.
This vantage point in history and in geography has made us among the first to realise the problems of the Mediterranean. As far back as 1972, Malta was the proponent of a theorem that there can be no security in Europe unless there be security in the Mediterranean, and that there can be no security in the Mediterranean unless there be security in Europe. This Maltese proposal became the Mediterranean basket of Helsinki I.
We have shown that the relations between Europe and the Mediterranean have always been on the vertical. We believe they have to be also on the horizontal. We have, through proposals in international fora, advocated a better understanding of the Mediterranean, of its problems and personalities, of the friction and the heritage which make this area a melting pot of pride and prejudice, of nationalism and lingering resentment towards past colonialism.
We proposed, first in Algiers in 1990 and later in the Malaga Inter-Parliamentary Union Conference in 1992, the setting up of a Council of the Mediterranean, drawing inspiration from the methods and practices of the Council of Europe. Within the OSCE context, we hosted two seminars on the Mediterranean, particularly on the social, cultural and environmental issues. The first was in 1979, the other in 1993.
In the OSCE Budapest Summit document, we sought to endorse and succeeded in having an informal open-ended contact group with countries then referred to as Non-Participating Mediterranean States, managed to change in 1995 this prohibitive nomenclature to Mediterranean Partners for Cooperation.
During the final conference on the Pact for Stability in Europe, in Paris on 20th March 1995, we advanced the idea of promoting a Pact of Stability for the Mediterranean. Malta proposed formally a Stability Pact for the Mediterranean at the Euro-Med Conference in Barcelona on 27th November 1995 – a pact or a charter having as its primary aim an exercise in preventive diplomacy and an alliance in partnership between Mediterranean states. The Euro-Med Conference is studying this proposal which will eventually become the political coagulant of the Barcelona Process.
In the United Nations, the strengthening of security and cooperation in the Mediterranean has repeatedly figured in recognition that security in Europe and security in the Mediterranean are inextricably interlinked.
Malta has taken an active interest in the evolution of the Middle East process, in particular, in the relations between Israel and the Palestinian people.
In the United Nations, Malta has consistently upheld the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and has been the rapporteur of the United Nations Committee set up for that purpose ever since its inception. It has equally maintained the right of Israel to secure and guaranteed frontiers, and this according to United Nations resolutions. My Government believes that our Mediterranean policy is one which adds to the Mediterranean dimension of the European Union. In an interview with Liberation in 1992, Jacques Delors, then President of the European Commission, said:
"Let us not forget that in the year 2000 we shall be more than twelve. Maybe a little more than twenty. There is a country one forgets, but which is very important as a symbol: Malta. We must not displace Europe too much towards the North while forgetting the South, we would risk in losing our sensitivity to the Mediterranean world which is our world, but which at present emulates the dangers for the future of all of us."
Malta's active foreign policy makes it not easy to be forgotten in the international community. It is a foreign policy which has inspired the Law of the Sea through its seminal concept of the common heritage of mankind; it is one which has promoted and brought forward with approval the proposal that the OSCE becomes the regional arrangement for peace-keeping in terms of Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter. It has sought the revitilisation of the United Nations General Assembly, a review of the role of the Trusteeship Council, believing that it should hold in trust for humanity its common heritage and its common concerns: the environment, the resources of the sea and the seabed, the climate and the rights of future generations.
In pursuance of policies concerning the United Nations and the Mediterranean, we have in Malta consensus and continuity. In so far as the European Union is concerned, all political parties in Malta want to foster a close relationship with the Union. The opposition Labour Party favours a close relationship short of membership; the Government believes in Malta becoming a member of the Union.
Malta applied to join the Union on 16th July 1990. What a different world the world was eleven years ago. Germany was then not yet united. The Warsaw Pact was in existence. The Soviet Union still presented its monolith formation in the international community.
| Today, negotiations for membership with the European | Union are far advanced, and the Government of Malta expects that, subject to the sovereign will of the Maltese people, Malta will form part of the Union in its first enlargement. |
| I have tried, in this lecture, to demonstrate Malta's | responsibilities in the Mediterranean region. It is a responsibility not exclusive in nature but complementary to its European belongingness. All facets of the European scene, be they Nordic, Central or Mediterranean, make their contribution to the Europeanness of our continent. |
| Every country, member or applicant thereof, brings to | the Union its own particular dimension. The Government believes that Malta will be contributing its own Mediterranean dimension, its insight and perspectives which result from a strategic position and geographical location in the region. |
| The Mediterranean has been present in the | long-standing concerns of the Union itself, as reflected in the original concept of a Global Mediterranean Policy, encompassing special agreements with most non-member states, and later through the Barcelona Process, intended to bring a political, economic and a socio-cultural participation in the Euro-Mediterranean relationship. |
| But my Government believes that what Malta will add | to the Mediterranean dimension of Europe is a sharper focus on those aspects of Mediterranean stability and cooperation which come naturally to us through history and geography; because of our awareness of Mediterranean issues, because of our constant advocacy of Mediterranean affairs, and also because of our sense of service to peoples of the Mediterranean, Malta in the European Union will have a bridging effect to Europe's Mediterranean dimension. |
| I do not think that it is usual for a Head of State, | in delivering a statement of this kind, to conclude with a quotation from a speech by His Holiness the Pope. His |
| Holiness was in Malta last May. Before his departure, | he said to me and to the Maltese people words which sound so resonant for this occasion: |
"Malta is at the centre of the Mediterranean. You therefore have a unique vocation to be builders of bridges between the peoples of the Mediterranean basin, between Africa and Europe. The future of peace in the world depends on strengthening dialogue and understanding between cultures and religions. Continue in your traditions of hospitality, and continue in your national and international commitment on behalf of freedom, justice and peace."
It is our vocation to be builders of bridges between the peoples of our region. This unique capacity in bridge-building is Malta's commitment to Europe and the Mediterranean.
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