Maltese and Italian politicians should sit around a table to discuss the migration crisis rather than lash out at each other on Twitter, former foreign affairs ministers have urged.
Both former ministers Tonio Borg and George Vella told The Sunday Times of Malta that the solution to rising tensions between Malta and Italy would be found by settling on a united position on the migration problem.
“You don’t find an answer to something as complex as this by Tweeting. That is not how these things are done. You have to come together, sit around a table and discuss,” said Dr Vella, who headed the Foreign Affairs Ministry during the 1996 Sant administration and again between 2013 and 2017.
He was referring to a series of social media exchanges between Maltese and Italian politicians in recent weeks, over who should be responsible for migrants rescued at sea.
Of late, Malta and Italy have regularly locked horns over who should bear responsibility for the hundreds of migrants routinely picked up from rickety boats and overcrowded dinghies.
Rarely a week has passed this summer without the two traditional allies quarrelling over who should take in a boatload of migrants rescued somewhere…
