Deadline Dom

Ever since he became Malta's Prime Minister last June, scrappy, erratic Socialist Dom Mintoff has made a specialty of issuing nonnegotiable demands. In one of his first official acts, for example, he told the British Governor General to resign and to clear out of the tiny Commonwealth island nation within four days. Last week "Deadline Dom," as he has become known in some corners of Malta's diplomatic community, came up with what could be his ultimate ultimatum. Unless Britain agreed to come across with an immediate $11 million increase in the rent that it pays for its Maltese bases, he said, Britain would have to pull all of its 3,500 sailors, soldiers and airmen out of the country by midnight New Year's Eve.

The demand was a sharp escalation in a bizarre campaign that Mintoff has been waging to gouge more money from Britain and other NATO countries that use Malta's superb naval and air facilities. With government indebtedness expected to reach a staggering $104 million by next spring, Malta is undeniably short of cash. Prime Minister Edward Heath offered to increase Britain's annual payments from $14 million to a generous $24 million, but Mintoff is holding out for $47 million.

Broken Agreement. When he threw down the gauntlet last week, Mintoff broke an agreement with Heath to continue negotiating at least until next March. Evidently, Mintoff figured that he was in strong diplomatic shape for an early showdown. He has been courting the Soviets for some time, and last week, after he fired his shot at Whitehall, he ostentatiously flew off for secret talks with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's anti-Western regime in Libya.

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."

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