MAJURO — Landowners at a high-profile U.S. Army missile defense testing facility in the central Pacific say their government is not seeking enough funding from the United States government in current negotiations with the U.S. government.
“What the Marshall Islands is asking the U.S. for is inadequate,” Kwajalein Negotiation Commission Chairman Christopher Loeak said in an interview.
Loeak, a senator in the Marshall Islands parliament, heads a group formed to represent landowners whose islands are being used by the U.S. Army’s Kwajalein missile range, a $4 billion testing facility that is playing a crucial role in the Bush administration’s accelerated push for a workable missile defense system.
“The Marshall Islands government is only asking the U.S. for $5 million a year for Ebeye and other islands in Kwajalein,” he said. “Experience tells us this amount won’t solve problems at Ebeye and other islands. That’s the level of funding we had before and we couldn’t do it.”
The Kwajalein landowners want to dramatically increase the current annual U.S. rental payment of $13 million as well as the length of the lease, saying that population and cost of living increases since the deal was negotiated in the early 1980s make the payments grossly inadequate.
Loeak said that the Kwajalein landowners have grown increasingly unhappy with the situation during the first 15 year term of the Compact of Free Association and see the same situation continuing for the next 15 years unless more money is pumped in to improve living conditions for the more than 10,000 Marshall Islanders who live crowded in slum-like conditions on 80-acre Ebeye Island next to the Army test facility.
Guaranteed U.S. funding to the Marshall Islands ends next year and is currently under negotiation between State Department and Marshall Islands officials. The U.S. lease for use of Kwajalein, however, does not expire until 2016. But landowners are unhappy with the terms of the lease as it enters its second 15 year phase.
Because the lease for the missile range isn’t expiring until 2016, Kwajalein is not on the negotiating table. But, said Loeak, the current Compact funding negotiations offer a unique opportunity for the U.S., the Marshall Islands and Kwajalein landowners to seriously consider increasing the length of the lease for the Kwajalein missile range.
“We understand that the U.S. needs Kwajalein for a longer period (beyond 2016),” said Loeak. “We’d like the U.S .to propose to the Marshall Islands and to us a longer period for use of Kwajalein.”
The Marshall Islands government in February formally requested a U.S. response about extending the lease term for Kwajalein, but U.S. officials have said they’re “studying” the proposal and have been non-committal, giving no indication of when a formal response will be forthcoming.
Loeak said Kwajalein leaders would like the U.S. to indicate the term of use it is interested in because “the U.S. is the tenant and it’s not our place to insist on 50 years.”
However, he said it’s his understanding that U.S. officials have been receptive to a 50-year lease proposal initiated by the Marshall Islands. “It would allow us to solve a number of issues,” he said pointing to the U.S. interest to extend its lease for Kwajalein and the lingering health and social problems for landowners at Kwajalein. Kwajalein leaders are not looking at an “extension” but rather a new lease to replace the current lease with a new one.
“We’re seeking a fair deal,” he said.
He believes that the Marshall Islands is not using the presence of the Kwajalein missile testing range to its advantage in the negotiations for future funding from the U.S. “We lose nothing by asking the U.S. (for money),” he said. “They can say no, but we won’t get anything if we don’t ask.”
