Word: mintoff
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With the approach of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff's Jan. 15 deadline for Britain to either pay more money or give up its bases on Malta, the negotiations took on some of the overtones of an international poker game. Mintoff kept insisting that Britain pay a $33.8 million rent hike over last year's $13 million. The British, holding the line at a proposed $11.7 million increase, evacuated 6,000 military dependents and began moving R.A.F. planes and personnel to bases on Sicily and Cyprus...
...first, the very suggestion of a compromise infuriated the British, who felt that a surrender to Mintoff now would only encourage him to ask for even more money in the future. Then both sides had second and more sober thoughts. Mintoff flew to Rome for a series of bargaining talks with Luns and British Defense Minister Lord Carrington. At week's end Mintoff came out smiling from one session to announce that his deadline, six hours before it was due to expire, had been extended. No agreement had been reached, and the game goes...
Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi appears willing to support Mintoff financially. Gaddafi has already loaned Malta about $3,000,000 to replenish the government's diminishing social security fund. Now he seems ready to do more. The end of 170 years of British use of the island would mean eliminating 22,000 full-or part-time jobs and losing a $54 million annual contribution to the economy. Gaddafi recently dispatched a plane to Malta to fly Mintoff to Tripoli. The upshot of their discussions was believed to be an agreement that Libya will cover such losses...
When one love-smitten member of Malta's 55-man Parliament neglected legislative duties last week for marriage and a brief honeymoon, Prime Minister Dom Mintoff promptly told the entire house to take a five-day recess. There was nothing festive about the holiday. Maltese opinion is sharply split over Mintoffs order that British troops either pay higher rents or quit the island (TIME, Jan. 10). With tensions rising as his Jan. 15 deadline approached and with only a one-vote parliamentary advantage, Mintoff was afraid to risk a vote of confidence while the groom...
London was not impressed. Coolly rejecting the $11 million demand, British Defense Minister Lord Carrington laconically noted that Britain had paid its rent through March, and that it would be glad to pull out after then "unless Mr. Mintoff changes his mind." Mintoff had reason for second thoughts, in view of the fact that a British withdrawal would subtract something like $58 million a year from Malta's fragile economy. At week's end he extended the deadline for two weeks to "alleviate suffering of poor women and children among British dependents...