Henry Kissinger was the National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon in 1972 when Dom Mintoff was concluding the Defence Agreement with the UK and NATO. During these negotiations, Mintoff attempted to secure as much money as possible from the British and NATO in exchange for leasing Malta’s defense facilities until they were closed in 1979. Mintoff succeeded in getting a deal of £14 million per year from the British and an additional £2.5 million payment from NATO.
During the negotiations, Mintoff kept asking for more money until the end of the 31st March deadline and was frustrating the British and the Allies with constant uncertainty. Two weeks before the deadline, Kissinger proposed to refuse Mintoff’s demand for an additional NATO payment, wait until he cracks after the 31st March, and then make the offer of payment to a new Maltese government.
At that point, Kissinger was late to the negotiations, and Nixon didn’t even agree with his overtly bullish position. On the other hand, the British reassured their American allies, that they were well experienced in dealing with “Levantine carpet dealers”.
The US had an issue with Mintoff’s proposal that the US was to be excluded from military and naval visits in the Defence Agreement with the UK. The exclusion clause was kept to a general one leaving out an explicit mention of the US.
The agreement was considered historic for Malta and was a great boost for economic development. Following the signing of the Defence Agreement with Defense Minister Lord Peter Carrington at Marlborough House in London, Mintoff went to Romania and then to China to sign economic and trade agreements.
Below I am posting some of the correspondence where Kissinger was mentioned during the negotiations (there are more mentions of Kissinger, but the number of files is voluminous).
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