According to a Wikileaks cable, the US ambassador to Libya had referred to “troubling” reports from the Maltese embassy – one of the busiest visa-issuing countries in Libya – that genuine Libyan passports with erroneous data had been identified.

The cable says that Libyan passports include a note if the passport is a replacement for an older passport.

“This notation, according to the Maltese, can be ‘forgotten’ if the prior passport would reveal inconvenient truths about the applicant’s travel history.”

The US ambassador, Gene Cretz, had written that this put the integrity of Libyan passports as an identity document into question.

Meanwhile, another cable released recently refers to a meeting between the Libyan, Italian and Maltese foreign ministers regarding last year’s visa ban for Europeans whose countries are in the Schengen zone.

Libya had imposed the ban after Switzerland issued a blacklist of prominent Libyan nationals, including Colonel Gaddafi’s son Hannibal.

The dispute between Libya and Switzerland dated back to July 2008, when Gaddafi’s son and his wife were arrested in Switzerland.

Libya had stopped oil exports to Switzerland, pulled billions of dollars from Swiss banks and continued to detain two Swiss businessmen working in Libya over charges of visa violations, among others. The ban was dropped at the end of March last year.

The document released by Wikileaks says that according to an Italian diplomat, a meeting between the Libyan, Italian and Maltese foreign ministers “will lead to a resolution of the current Schengen visa crisis”.

In his view, the Libyans invoked the visa ban on Schengen states as leverage in their negotiations with the Swiss, a move “deemed successful” as it had elicited strong public criticism of Switzerland and exacerbated already tense relations between Switzerland and the EU.