TheProgressive Socialist Organizations of the Mediterranean (PSOM),[1][2][3] also known as theMediterranean Socialist Conference,[4][5] was a bloc and gathering of socialist parties and movements of theMediterranean region, conceived and planned byAndreas Papandreou of Greece andDom Mintoff of Malta and mostly funded byMuammar Gaddafi’s Libya.
PSOM aimed to function as an alternative to theSocialist International (SI), which, PSOM members felt, was under the negative influence and hegemony of theWest GermanSPD, which was considered an “almost conservative” party, and this despite the personal friendship ofWilly Brandt and Papandreou. Dislike towards the SPD had mainly to do with its embrace of what PSOM members felt was West Germany’s “subservience” regarding NATO’s “inordinate hostility” towards theSoviet Union and anti-colonial left-wing movements.
PSOM was also notable for bringing together mutually hostile parties and trying to bridge their differences, such as with the case of theSyrian Baath ofHafez al-Assad and theIraqi Baath ofAhmed Hassan al-Bakr andSaddam Hussein, or the Syrian Baath andYasser Arafat’sFatah, that presided over thePLO, despite Syrian and Libyan opposition. The generally moderate ruling party of Tunisia (Socialist Destourian Party) also participated, and, afterHosni Mubarak rose to power in Egypt in 1981, he made sure to maintain some contacts with PSOM, but without officially joining. Andreas Papandreou eventually convincedFrançois Mitterrand,Bettino Craxi andFelipe González to also join PSOM.
PSOM was coordinated by a Permanent Secretariat, headquartered inTripoli, Libya (Gaddafi was the chief financial sponsor of PSOM) and presided over by the Secretary-General, Libyan diplomatAhmed al-Shahati[6] (1936-2006, a career diplomat who had joined the Libyan diplomatic service during the regime ofKing Idris).Karolos Papoulias, Secretary ofPASOK’s International Relations Committee (later Foreign Minister andPresident of Greece) played a key organizing role for PSOM’s events and conferences.
PSOM organized a series of conferences, of which the first took place in November 1976 inBarcelona, Spain. The next was inValletta, Malta in June 1977, which led to the signing of the “Malta Document”,[2] outlining the basic thrust of PSOM’s policies and officially establishing the Permanent Secretariat in Tripoli, Libya. In May 1979, the third conference took place in Greece, in the seaside Athenian suburb ofVouliagmeni.[4] The fourth conference was inAlgiers, Algeria (May 1982),[7] the fifth inBelgrade, Yugoslavia (May 1984) and the sixth inNicosia, Cyprus (October 1988).
In the first conference that took place in Barcelona (November 1976), the following parties (not all of them from the Mediterranean) were represented (in alphabetical order of countries):[8]
Between 1977 and 1982, as a result of lobbying and development of contacts, more political parties and movements agreed to join PSOM, so that by the time of the 4th conference in Algiers (May 1982), the following parties and organizations had become members, in addition to those previously noted:[7]
