MAJURO — The Marshall Islands has objected to a U.S. State Department demand that changes to immigration and other non-expiring provisions of a Compact of Free Association be negotiated as part of the current Compact funding talks.
“We were quite surprised to receive major and substantive proposed changes in the draft (non-expiring) Title One, Three and Four (provisions),” Foreign Minister Gerald Zackios told U.S. State Department negotiator Albert Short in a letter last month that was obtained Wednesday.
But Short is adamant that immigration and other non-expiring issues be discussed in the current negotiations and be included in the revised package that is expected to be put to the U.S. Congress for approval later this year. Part of this, he said in a reply to Zackios on May 21, is due to increased security concerns in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Since the first Compact went into effect in 1986, Marshall Islanders have enjoyed visa-free entry privileges to the U.S. The U.S. wants to begin modifying these rights, even though they do not expire like the funding provisions that end in 2003.
Marshall Islands Compact negotiator Robert Muller said that a number of the immigration issues — including developments for the Marshall Islands such as machine-readable passports — can be handled through normal government-to-government channels.
At the third round of talks last December, “I recall your admonition to both delegations to work only on those Compact provisions that require negotiation as a result of their impending expiration,” Zackios told Short.
Zackios said that Short stated the U.S. position “that we should only be dealing with provisions that specifically expire and not engage in drafting substantive changes to non-expiring provisions that do not require immediate attention.”
He said this approach “made a great deal of sense” given the limited resources of the Marshall Islands and the short time period allowed to conclude the talks.
After noting the “surprise” of the Marshall Islands at the U.S. desire to open up immigration and other non-expiring issues, Zackios said that the Marshall Islands “also has major issues that need to be addressed concerning non-expiring provisions of the Compact (including) Section 177 agreement changed circumstances (related to additional nuclear test compensation) and Kwajalein (missile test range).”
The Marshall Islands, however, is working with the U.S. to address these outstanding issues on a “parallel track” to the Compact funding renegotiations.
“If the Marshall Islands were to engage in rewriting certain non-expiring provisions to our satisfaction and submit them as draft amendments to the Compact, I am sure that this entire negotiation process will become bogged down to the point where we will be unable to conclude the expiring provisions in a timely manner.”
