With food price riots in Algeria, unemployment protests in Tunisia and anti-Christian violence Egypt, the Maghreb region stands at serious risk of falling deeper into the turmoil that has gripped it over recent weeks.

Added to that, Morocco broke up yet another terrorist cell last week operated by Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa, known by the acronym AQIM – an Algeria-based group affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network since 2006.

In fact, of all the Maghreb countries it is only Libya that appears to have been spared the recent wave of unrest. But then again, no news is not necessarily good news from Libya, where dissent is less tolerated than it is even in Tunisia.

But here in Malta we appear more interested in issues thousands of kilometres to the north such as the student protests in the UK or the Stockholm car bombing than we are with far more serious disturbances just a couple hundred kilometres away.

True, Malta is now part of the great European community and as such policies and events in other EU member states will have a trickledown effect on Malta, but we should not by any means remain unconcerned by the seriousness of what is unfolding in our very backyard.

Malta, after all, is supposedly the bridge between the European and North African people, economy, culture and political structures. As such, the country has an important role to play, possibly as an interlocutor between the EU and the Maghreb as the former attempts calls for the situations to be peacefully diffused lest they grow further out of hand.

This week the European Parliament’s Delegation for relations with Maghreb countries called, in a formal declaration, for an independent inquiry into the deaths of street protestors in Tunisia and condemned the use of live ammunition to break up protests. A number of MEPs are also advocating the suspension of the EU’s so-called ‘advanced status’ for Tunisia, which complements its EU Association Agreement and which MEPs argued was conditional on the country’s respect for human rights.

“Deploring” the violence and deaths in Tunisia, the EU’s EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Catherine Ashton has called for restraint and the respect of fundamental freedoms on the part of the Tunisian authorities. She also called for the release of detained bloggers, journalists, lawyers and others detained after peacefully demonstrating in Tunisia.

On the macro level, the EU is taking note of and is at least on the surface acting on the mayhem in Tunisia – chiefly because of its proximity to the bloc and the trade ties shared between the EU and the Maghreb.

And Malta, along the same lines and for the same reasons, should be fruitfully contributing to if not placing itself at the forefront of diplomatic initiatives to bring peace and resolution to the increasingly troubled region – in the interest of the EU, the stability of the Mediterranean region and for its own good as well.