Although we are in the middle of the silly season when people tend to place less importance on what politicians say and are somewhat distracted by the sand, sun and sea, the Chief Minister chose to fly a kite in last Monday's edition of the Gibraltar Chronicle which has not gone unnoticed. Amidst all the sensational headlines covering the case of Chief Justice Schoffield, we are told by Peter Caruana, according to Paco Oliva, that there is nothing wrong in Spain raising the issue of sovereignty in the Tripartite Forum for dialogue or making proposals for a definitive solution to the Gibraltar problem. There are several inconsistencies in this position which the Chief Minister has not even bothered to justify.

The first of these contradictions is the claim by all the participants in the Tripartite Forum that what allows them to conduct their business is that the sovereignty question has been put to one side with each party protecting their respective position on that very sensitive issue. This allows Peter Caruana to say that dialogue is safe whenever he returns with packages he needs to sell to the people. Clearly, if sovereignty is on the backburner, it can hardly be in the agenda too.

The second contradiction lies in this obsessive belief by the Chief Minister that his views and thoughts on any given subject are tantamount to reality despite other people holding conflicting views. He continues to claim that the Tripartite Forum has replaced the Brussels Agreement with neither of the two signatories to that agreement, namely Britain and Spain, agreeing that this is the case. Indeed, although Britain remains tight lipped on this issue, Spain has openly said at the United Nations that this is not the case and that it expects to hold talks on sovereignty within the ambit of the Brussels Agreement, that is bilaterally, very shortly. It is therefore clear that the most the Chief Minister can expect is for discussions on proposals to take place at one level with any agreement being ratified at Brussels by the big two, the one that has sovereignty and the one that wants it. This, despite the Chief Minister's claim of being decolonised!

The other very important contradiction is that by trying to provoke proposals over sovereignty, which is what Peter Caruana is trying to do, he is acting contrary to the result of the November 2002 referendum when people not only overwhelmingly rejected the "done deal", but also declared that no one grain of sand of Gibraltar was negotiable with Spain or with any other party for that matter. The people have already made clear their rejection to any sovereignty proposals being even contemplated or considered, in a referendum organised by Peter Caruana himself, how can he now turn on them and say that proposals on sovereignty are quite alright, even if it is to say no.

Once something is down in black and white and you agree to consider it, it is because there is a possibility of acceptance, this business of saying that you can say no does not stick. The Chief Minister has no mandate to consider proposals on sovereignty, the opposite is true, he has a mandate to reject every proposal or move on sovereignty made by Spain under the terms of his own referendum. If Gibraltar were really decolonised, the. issue could not arise, but he well knows this is not true and he is testing the water for more adventurous things that he sees follow naturally from the Tripartite Forum. If the Chronicle story is proved to be correct, what it demonstrates is that there is more behind the Tripartite than what we have been led to believe.