Dear Mr Under-Secretary, thank you first of all for finding time to come and visit us here.

We note that from Malta you are going on to Lisbon to speak to representatives of the government there. They have already made it clear that they will be representing the European Union and have been mandated to meet you by Catherine Ashton herself.

We cannot say the same thing, so you will excuse us if we are rather surprised you were sent here especially when we also know that attempts from the part of your government to send representatives directly to Brussels have been rebuffed, while representatives of the liberated areas around Benghazi have been meeting with the European Parliament. We would not like to think you came here because your government thinks we share what Commissioner John Dalli or former premier Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici have been expressing as regards your regime: We definitely disassociate ourselves from that. We will listen to what you have to tell us regarding the current situation in Libya but we must admit we find it hard to believe that your government really wants the best for your country and your people seeing it is even now bombing inert citizens whose only fault has been that they were protesting – a civil right sanctified in any democracy worth its name.

We could stop the meeting here and urge you only one thing: Stop the bombing, the killing, the atrocities and submit to the International Criminal Court and only then will we talk. But now that you are here, you might as well hear what we have to say.

As you and your government well know, Malta is now in the EU. Over the coming two days our representatives will be at special meetings in Brussels at which the Libya issue will be discussed. Our loyalties are with our people and our people’s interest today more than at any other time does not lie in being or even appearing to be covering up for a regime that bombs its own people. Our people’s loyalties are with the people of Libya and with whoever represents them according to their will.

At these meetings in the coming days we are sure we will share the anguish and anger at what is happening in Libya. Our representatives will be sitting around the table where among the issues there will be what concrete steps will be taken with regards to the situation in Libya. Understand, Mr Under-Secretary, that our position will not just go along with what is decided but also be that there is much we would like to see done even though there are practical, legal and political limits to what can really be done. This would not be enough to explain our position to people who have been tortured, including journalists, and to those who are asking why is the world not intervening.

Over the past days, Malta has acted on the humanitarian level, welcoming foreign nationals who have had to escape from your country. Malta is now preparing itself to cope with people who may find living in Libya very dangerous for them and who manage to come here. This will cost our small economy also because, we do not mind telling you, we are unfortunately not finding enough solidarity from our European partners.

You have come here to tell us your government’s views. You have little time here, but had you had more, we would have liked you to go round and see for yourself how a small, maybe not perfect, yet a real democracy is. For it is not enough to have natural resources, nor to have big skyscrapers, nor planes and helicopters or what have you: A real democracy is built on the rule of law, on regular respect for the will of the people, on the total absence of dictatorships and torture. As has already happened in Tunisia and Egypt, whenever a ruler creates a small group of people around him which creams off all economic opportunities, the economy of the country becomes fatally skewed and will not work. The people, on behalf of whom the riches are supposedly held, will remain poor and underprivileged.

We might as well tell you that Malta will go along with whatever is decided at UN and EU levels. Certainly, more than on the military level, we will fully implement whatever is decided at EU level as regards sanctions against your government. As you well know, the sanctions have over the past days become stricter as a result of our collective impotency to do more to defend the people of Libya from air raids. Both here and in Libya itself there are many investments operated jointly by Maltese entrepreneurs and your regime’s financial institution. Politics apart, we were very happy to be collaborating in such business ventures, and maybe there was more that could be done. Imposing the sanctions will harm us but we will do it if we have to, if that is one way to get your government to stop bombing inert people.

Over the past days, your leader has given as many different interpretations of the genesis of this uprising as there are colours in the rainbow: The protesters were druggies, then they were al-Qaeda, then it was the West to get at your oil. Seen from here it looks more like a people that have been repressed for over 40 years finally getting enough courage from what happened among the neighbours and now paying horribly for their courage.

But things have now passed what for us and the rest of the world is a very definite red line: From being a latent dictatorship camouflaged as a country modernising itself to being a bare-faced military reign of terror. There can now be no mediation, nor negotiations between the sides, or between your government and the rest of the world. Each death must be investigated and your government must step down and allow justice to be done.

Please take with you all that we have told you. Our expressions of friendship with the Libyan people we will express in due time, to the right representatives.