The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has requested Spain to act as a mediator between NATO and European Union member states Malta and Cyprus on the exchange of secret military information.

Meeting in the Latvian capital of Riga this weekend, NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer requested Spanish prime minister Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to intervene on the thorny issue of the sharing of Maltese and Cypriot secret military information with NATO since the two countries do not form part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) co-operation programme, where such information is usually shared.

The request was made with a view to improving mutual political relations between NATO and the whole of the European Union, Baltic press agency BNS reports. Speaking on Friday, Scheffer said the matter was one of the obstacles in relations between the international military alliance and the EU.

The lack of exchange of secret military information with Malta and Cyprus, Scheffer said, was particularly complicated since neither country is a member of the Partnership for Peace programme.

Representatives of NATO and the EU regularly meet to discuss security and military issues and when Malta and Cyprus joined the EU it was thought the pair would join NATO’s PfP programme, which would have given them access to the joint meetings related to security and operations. Turkey’s opposition to the membership of Cyprus, not necessarily Malta, has, however, presented a lasting obstacle to resolving the issue.