When Mintoff tried to 'blackmail' the US

Prime Minister Dom Mintoff tried to “blackmail” the US into offering Malta financial assistance through a July 1976 letter sent to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, leaked embassy cables show. He intimated that unless European states, backed by the US, stuck up for Malta’s neutrality and economy, he would be forced to announce a pact with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya. “Blackmail is a harsh word, but it seems to fit in this case,” a US embassy official wrote in his report to Washington on July 7, noting how Mr Mintoff “apparently assumes that we and our Nato allies will be terrified at the prospect of a Maltese mutual defence agreement with Col Gaddafi”. Dr Kissinger’s reply to Mintoff was that the US was “not now in a position to comment substantively” on his suggestions. Full story in The Times.