News • 13 July 2003

How Lockerbie kept us out in ‘95

Kurt Sansone

The Lockerbie bombing of a Pan Am flight that claimed the lives of 270 people in December 1988 may have been the reason behind the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s opposition to Malta becoming an EU member state as early as 1995, MaltaToday can reveal.

MaltaToday can confirm it was Kohl’s insistence that saw Malta’s name struck off the final document of the Lisbon summit in 1992 that gave the go-ahead for accession negotiations to start with EFTA countries Sweden, Austria and Finland.

Interviewed on Net TV a fortnight ago then-foreign minister Guido de Marco said that he had information that Malta’s name had featured along side the EFTA countries but was mysteriously removed in the final draft of the document.

De Marco also said that a number of countries obstructed Malta’s membership bid but would not reveal their names.

Investigations carried out by MaltaToday show that de Marco was probably referring to the Lisbon summit in 1992 and that Germany was the country making the biggest fuss about Malta’s membership along with the EFTA countries.

In the biography of former president Censu Tabone, written by Henry Frendo specific reference is made to Helmut Kohl’s lukewarm approach to Malta’s application. Kohl’s excuse for opposing Malta’s application, the book says, was "for security reasons".

MaltaToday can reveal that the reason given by Kohl to pressure the other fellow EU member states to postpone Malta’s membership was conditioned by the events that unfolded in relation to the Lockerbie terrorist attack.

In 1992 two Libyan secret agents had been indicted as the prime suspects in the case. The theory followed by US and British investigators was that the fatal bomb left Malta in an unaccompanied luggage aboard an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt. At Frankfurt the tainted suitcase was supposedly transferred to a Pan Am flight to London before being transferred once again to its final destination, Pan AM flight 103.

The Malta link was made because of what investigators claimed were clothes found in the debris that were bought in Malta. Furthermore, the two indicted Libyans were employed in Malta as agents for Libyan Arab Airlines.

Air Malta has consistently denied that any unaccompanied luggage could have made it on its flight to Frankfurt and evidence presented in court does little to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the bomb actually left from Malta.

In 2001 an international court set up in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands found Libyan secret service agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi guilty of the Lockerbie bombing and sentenced him to life imprisonment. But Megrahi’s co-accused was found not guilty.

The Malta-Lockerbie link coupled with the island’s flirtations with Libya under the Mintoff years caused jitters in the continent, it seems. Helmut Kohl was not convinced of Malta’s European allegiances even though Germany was as involved as Malta in the Lockerbie incident.

Censu Tabone’s biography recalls the time when as president of the republic, Tabone was on a state visit to Germany prior to the 1995 EU enlargement. Kohl did not receive Tabone and the biography registers Tabone's disagreement with Kohl’s reasoning: "So Kohl was wrong even strategically... because if he was unsure of Malta's 'Mediterranean' loyalties he should have moved to harness them, not to distance them."

Today, this is a closed chapter in EU-Malta relations with the island firmly on track to join the EU next year. But the incident is indicative of the unnecessary damage the Lockerbie allegations caused the island on the international scene.

kurt@maltamag.com