In his opinion piece “Consensus on foreign policy should do us proud” (The Malta Independent, 22 March), Leo Brincat wrote that “on more than one occasion leading Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil declared in no uncertain terms that we should offer all we can (implicitly suggesting military assets) in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya in order to support international military forces”.

Mr Brincat’s recollection of what I said is hardly precise.

So, lest he gets carried away with what he thinks I said, allow me to quote verbatim what I said on this matter when I replied to questions put to me by the media last week.

“Malta is duty bound to respect the UNSC resolution and our constitutional provisions on neutrality do not prevent us from doing so. That includes allowing military planes to use our airspace as may be necessary for the implementation of the resolution,” he said, when contacted by timesofmalta.com.

He said Malta should keep “a sense of proportion and perspective” regarding lending use of military facilities.

“We have no military assets to use and we should not pretend to have any military muscle because we do not. But we could be asked to offer our facilities to support military assets that are used in the implementation of the UN resolution in view of our ideal geographic situation. If this becomes necessary, we should say yes,” he said.

He added that the Maltese government had already taken a very clear position in favour of the Libyan people and against the Gaddafi regime.

“This required significant political courage considering our size and traditional ties with Libya. Moreover, Malta has already played an admirable role on the humanitarian front. So both legally and morally Malta has done the right thing. We should continue doing the right thing.”

Unquote.

■ Simon Busuttil MEP

Valletta