Turkish deadlock, not US demands, at the heart of PfP reactivation

Richard Cachia Caruana’s tacticto convince NATO that Malta’s membership in the Partnership for Peace (PfP) could be “reactivated” may have been instrumental for Malta gaining access to the EU’s common European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) meetings that discussed NATO classified information.

Turkey was vetoing Malta’s and Cyprus’s access to EU-NATO meetings because they were not PfP participants and had no NATO security agreement.

But Malta was caught in the crossfire of a political standoff between Turkey and Cyprus.

As a non-EU member of NATO, Turkey threatened to veto a deal to allow the EU to use NATO assets for peacekeeping and crisis management, unless Cyprus, which it did not recognise, was excluded from ESDP operations employing NATO assets.

The USA and United Kingdom entered the fray to hammer out the “Ankara Text”, which included the condition that only EU member states that were either NATO or PfP Members, which had a bilateral security agreement with NATO, could join the EU-NATO talks.

This excluded both Cyprus and Malta from participating or vote in the EU’s political and security committee or receive EU classified information referring to NATO. The fact that Maltese officials had to leave the room during such EDSP discussions had been “a source of embarrassment for the government since EU accession” according to former US ambassador Molly Bordonaro.

Turkey used its veto to demand more EU aid to Turkish Cypriots in northern Cyprus, but this left Malta hanging in the balance. Unless it rejoined PfP it could not break the Turkish deadlock.

Bordonaro had also queried whether Malta had withdrawn completely from PfP in 1996, “or simply ended its active participation and its Individual Partner Program.”

According to former Labour foreign minister George Vella’s note verbale to NATO secretary-general Javier Solana, Malta had “terminated” its PfP participation.

Malta’s permanent representative to the EU, Richard Cachia Caruana opined that Malta should declare it had “simply ceased active participation” in PfP, but not that it had formally withdrawn from the agreements, making it possible to say that the prior PfP agreement ‘remained in force’.

After Lawrence Gonzi’s surprise application to join PfP just over a week after winning re-election in March 2008, the field was open to questions surrounding Malta’s relations with the United States and whether PfP membership was a condition of its double-taxation treaty.

Lawrence Gonzi has defended his decision to reactivate the PfP programme as “one such opportunity in the national interest”, pointing out that Cyprus continues to be denied access to important EU documents because it’s not part of the PfP programme.

Gonzi says the Libyan conflict confirmed that effective EU-NATO cooperation is essential in today’s world. “PfP is an excellent opportunity for the Armed Forces of Malta. Sharing experiences from participation in training for peacekeeping and related activities strengthens the capability and readiness of the AFM to contribute to operations under the authority of the United Nations or the OSCE that Malta, as a member of both organisations, has an interest in supporting.”