|
By GIFF JOHNSON
The Bush Administration last
week told the US Congress that it should not give more
nuclear test money to the Marshall Islands.
“There is no legal basis
for considering additional payments,” the State Department’s
undersecretary for political affairs Marc Grossman said in a
January 4 letter to Senator Jeff Bingaman.
Grossman transmitted the
report aiming to derail efforts by RMI to get $3 billion in
extra for islanders affected by tests conducted between 1946
and 1958.
The report says Congress
should reject any additional funding beyond the $150 million
fund provided as part of a “full and final” settlement
agreed to in the first Compact.
“The facts regarding
radioactive fallout do not support a request under the
‘changed circumstances’ provision of the Section 177
settlement agreement,” the report says.
While the RMI asserts that
many more islands were exposed to fallout than the US will
admit, the US report dismisses this.
In response, Foreign
Minister Gerald Zackios said his government “is deeply
disappointed not only with the State Department’s erroneous
conclusions but also its lengthy delay in issuing the
report.” Zackios said the government “firmly stands behind
the facts and requests” in its petition to the Congress.
“There is an abundance of scientific evidence and legal
commentary to support our positions, as well as a
legislative and diplomatic record that confirms them,” he
said.
But he added that the RMI
is pleased Congress will be holding hearings later this year
on the nuclear petition, at which time the Marshalls will
“vigorously press our case.”
The report was issued
nearly three years after Congress requested an analysis of a
Marshall Islands petition for more compensation.
The US provided a trust
fund of $150 million in 1986, which paid out $270 million
over 15 years. Currently less than $4 million is left in the
fund, while about $1 billion in land damage and nuclear
clean up awards for the former nuclear tests sites of Bikini
and Enewetak, and more than $14 million in personal injury
awards remain unpaid by a Nuclear Claims Tribunal
established to oversee the claims process.
A provision of the package
contained in a Compact of Free Association allows the RMI to
request Congress to consider additional compensation. But
RMI must show that damage to property or people was
discovered after the effective date of the agreement that
renders the compensation provided “manifestly inadequate.”
The petition contends that
since the agreement was approved 20 years ago, US radiation
protection standards have become more stringent, while
numerous formerly top-secret US scientific reports were
declassified by the Clinton Administration in the mid-1990s.
These reports, the petition
argues, demonstrate that fallout exposure was not limited to
the four atolls.
But the report said that
while the atolls immediately downwind of Bikini were
affected by tests, “data do not support such a finding for …
other areas of the Marshall Islands.”
In November and December,
land damage claims were filed with the Nuclear Claims
Tribunal by 10 more atolls. The US report says of recently
filed claims by islanders from Ailuk, Likiep, Wotho, Ujelang,
Mejit and Jemo: “These (islands) did not appear to have
received any significant direct contamination from the Bravo
event or other tests conducted at Bikini and Enewetak
atolls.”
The report says that “there is no ‘changed circumstance’ on
which an additional funding request can legitimately be
made.”
The report is also critical
of the Nuclear Claims Tribunal. It says the Tribunal
exceeded the compensation allotted to it under the agreement
when it issued personal injury awards that now total nearly
$86 million, and land damage awards to Bikini and Enewetak
of about $585 million, which with interest now total about
$1 billion.
“The US government played
no role in establishment of the Tribunal’s award eligibility
criteria, which embrace persons and compensable conditions
not recognized under US radiation injury compensation
programs,” the US report says.
EDITORIAL: Flaws in
N-report
In dismissing the Marshall
Islands nuclear compensation petition, the Bush
Administration says things like the weight of scientific
evidence is against the RMI petition, or that, in response
to specific hazards or exposures alleged by the RMI, there
is no “significant” concern.
Since the US Atomic Energy
Commission (now Department of Energy/DOE) has been in charge
of radiological and medical monitoring, conducting the vast
majority of scientific studies in the RMI for the past
nearly 60 years, it’s not surprising that the so-called
“weight” of scientific evidence supports the US contention
that all is well on fallout-exposed islands.
But the Bush Administration
report, released last week to the US Congress, has a number
of important flaws:
• It cites extensively from
the Compact-funded Nationwide Radiological Survey that was
completed in the mid-1990s. The primary conclusion of this
survey was that there is virtually no current hazard to
habitation on any island, with the exception of a few
islands in Bikini, Enewetak and Rongelap. But note the word
“current”. This totally disregards the issue of islanders
who lived on (in some cases, such as Rongelap and Utrik,
were moved back onto) radioactive islands following the
Bravo test, increasing their exposure from living and eating
foods grown in a radioactive environment.
• It repeats the long-discredited myth perpetuated by the US
government that the Bravo fallout in 1954 was the result of
an “unexpected” wind shift. Formerly secret documents,
released more than 10 years ago, confirm that the story of
an unexpected change in winds was, and is, a myth. These US
documents confirm that American test officials knew the day
before Bravo that winds were blowing east toward Rongelap
and other inhabited islands. Indeed, because of this US
officials ordered US navy vessels monitoring Bravo to move
away from the expected fallout.
The fact, too, that the US
report is critical of the Nuclear Claims Tribunal for
exceeding the compensation allotted to it is another bizarre
argument rolled out to undermine the “changed circumstances”
petition: As if the Tribunal was wrong in awarding fairly
determined compensation. That was and is its job, as
mandated by the US and RMI approved Compact. The RMI will
have to produce a comprehensive response to the US
government’s report. It will take a strong effort to push
the issue in a Congress facing a huge deficit. But the US
government has both a moral and legal obligation to Marshall
Islands nuclear test survivors. Fortunately the issue of
additional compensation is a decision for the Congress, not
the Bush Administration. |
