Marshall Islands Foreign Minister John Silk said Friday that Nauru Foreign Minister Kieren Keke confirmed this during discussions last month.
Landowners on the property — which is located across the street from the country’s capital complex and sits astride the only sandy beach in this part of the atoll — filed suit against Nauru alleging that the South Pacific nation that was once rich from phosphate mining has failed to pay the approximately $20,000 annual rent for three years. The lawsuit, filed in the
Marshall Islands High Court, put Nauru on notice of the landowners intent to take over the facility on the basis that Nauru violated the lease.
“Nauru officials approached us in New York City and said they want to get out of the lease,” Silk said in an interview.
He met with Keke and other Nauru officials at the United Nations General Assembly in late September when Nauru President Marcus Stephens and Marshall Islands President Jurelang Zedkaia delivered speeches to the United Nations. Zedkaia is the traditional chief for the property in dispute.
Silk said he told Keke that the government was happy to be the go-between to the landowners to move the process forward.
The unfinished hotel property — once Majuro’s only hotel and which remained under sporadic construction from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s — has been turned into retail and wholesale food stores, apartments, offices, auto repair and taxi businesses, and beach dumpsites. It has been in Nauru hands since the early 1970s. In the early 2000s, Nauru went bankrupt, the result of mining exhausting phosphate deposits and mismanagement of a multi-billion dollar trust fund.
Silk said he asked Keke to send an official communication stating Nauru’s intentions with the lease so the next steps can be taken. “I sent a diplomatic note last week saying that we are awaiting their formal notice,” Silk said. Foreign Affairs staff followed this up with a second communication to Nauru and Nauru officials confirmed receiving the “dip note,” Silk said.
Silk said he would like to see the government discuss use of the property with the landowners.
