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Marshall Islands-US relations deteriorate again: The Tomaine-de-Blum government is losing control after failure

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Marshall Islands-US relations deteriorate again: The Tomaine-de-Blum government is losing control after failure

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Marshall Islands-US relations deteriorate again: The Tomaine-de-Blum government is losing control after failure

Reports from within the Marshall Islands government suggest that the government is demoralized, disorganized, and profoundly incompetent as a result of the cumulative failures:

  • An ultimatum from the Marshall Islands foreign minister to the United States over payment for Kwajalein base rights has backfired, with the United States insisting on complying with the legal terms of the compact and landowners wanting to keep the new payment amount in an escrow account, even though De Brum called the increase approved by Congress an “insult.”
  • An attempt by Irish Foreign Minister Tony de Brum to impose his country’s ambassadorial appointment on the United States has backfired, leaving the top embassy post unmanned at a critical time in bilateral relations.
  • Tony’s mishandling of a potential $100 million nuclear claims bill (S. 1756) in the U.S. Congress, his subsequent dishonest explanation to the Marshall Islands Legislature, and his hasty attempt to correct his mistakes after nine months of inaction also backfired when DeBlum’s rude mockery of weak congressional support for the bill was, by all accounts, too late.
  • De Brum’s desperate attempt to make the OTEC alternative energy project on Kwajalein Atoll a condition of the Kwajalein land use agreement backfired because OTEC would require private investment that may or may not occur, making the U.S. agreement to purchase power from the OTEC project effectively irrelevant to the Kwajalein land use issue.

Now, we are hearing from Marshall Islands government sources that DeBrum pushed the Marshall Islands parliament to pass new land use laws that reportedly give adjacent landowners title to landfills for public works projects and require additional compensation. Details remain unclear, but apparently the FAA and the Department of the Interior have told the Marshall Islands that the United States will not fund public works projects under the terms of the leases, which are a fraud, including much-needed FAA improvements to Majuro International Airport.

Apparently, the United States has finally realized that the land lease system for public works projects in the Marshall Islands is a fraud on both the Marshall Islands Treasury and the U.S. Treasury. There are even reports that De Brum or his agents may own land near the airport expansion project site.

Just as the Kwajalein land use leases made the feudal lords the richest people in all of Micronesia, and just as Imata Kabua and his foreign partners attempted to appropriate the Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund to pay the feudal lords for the use of Rongelap land for the benefit of the community, the new land fill lease rights law may reportedly be part of a conspiracy to use public projects on public lands as a “cash cow” to make the richest people in the Marshall Islands even richer.

The United States may have finally realized that the feudal lords of the Marshall Islands did not take care of the “common people” fairly in accordance with traditional Marshallese customs, but instead concentrated most of the wealth in the hands of the ruling class.

In addition, Marshall Islands government sources revealed that the United States has indicated to the Marshall Islands government that the recently passed law that restored the authority of the Kwajalein Local Development Authority (KADA) does not mean that the United States will negotiate with the agency over Kwajalein funding and enforcement of the Base Rights Agreement. The United States prefers to deal with the Marshall Islands government and views KADA as an agent of feudal lords who have abused civilians in the past.

An in-depth report on De Brum’s role in these issues will appear on this website soon. The failure of the RMI’s policy toward the United States under de Brum exposed the flaws in both U.S. and RMI practices that de Brum was trying to exploit, and that must be reformed if Free Association is to be maintained as a successful union.

This entry was posted on September 3, 2008 at 7:01 pm and is filed under uncategorizedYou can RSS 2.0 Feed. You can Leave a Replyor Tracing From your own website.

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