Next Wednesday is the five-year cut-off by which a new land use agreement is needed or the rental money being held is slated to return to the U.S. Treasury. Although the congressional legislation allows the two governments to mutually agree on a different course for of action for the money, there has been no indication from the U.S. of any willingness to engage with the Marshall Islands on this issue, despite repeated requests from President Litokwa Tomeing and Foreign Minister Tony deBrum.
A Compact of Free Association between the Marshall Islands and the U.S. was amended in 2003, extending U.S. use of the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein until 2066. But landowners balked at the new pact, saying the rent hike from $11 million to $15 million annually wasn’t enough, and demanded $19 million.
An escrow account was established for the difference in rental payments between the old and new agreements, and the U.S. Congress set a five-year window for a new deal to be approved. With an inflation adjustment, annual rental payments are now above $17 million.
But landowners have said unless the U.S. sweetens the deal, they will not sign a new land use agreement, required to implement the missile range extension since the land at Kwajalein is privately held.
“The landowners stand firm,” said deBrum, who also represents Kwajalein in the parliament. “It is my strongest conviction that there won’t be a new land use agreement before the 17th.”
The Marshall Islands is in a holding pattern waiting for a response from President Bush to a letter Tomeing sent last month seeking to delay the December 17 deadline to give additional time for the government and the landowners to negotiate an agreement that would allow the U.S. to continue using the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein until 2066. The existing land use agreement expires in 2016.
“We’re waiting for a response from President Bush,” Minister in Assistance to the President Christopher Loeak said Friday. “The government has not yet received a response.”
U.S. Ambassador to the Marshall Islands Clyde Bishop said he, too, is waiting to hear from Bush.
“I am awaiting the U.S. president’s response to President Tomeing’s letter,” Bishop said. “The present position of the U.S. government remains as before: without a signed LUA, I am instructed to return the escrow account monies to the U.S. Treasury.”
DeBrum said it is his hope there will be a postponement of the deadline to allow everyone to work together to get the deal amicably resolved. A return of the money to the U.S. after Dec. 17 sets in motion the requirement that the U.S. President report to the Congress on U.S. plans for use of Kwajalein post-2016, deBrum said.
Kwajalein leaders have already said that without a new deal, the U.S. will have to leave Kwajalein in 2016, a departure that would end a more than 50-year presence at a missile range that has been the testing center for U.S. missile defense technology since the mid-1960s.
Loeak said he doesn’t know what will happen next week, but he is hopeful the U.S. will “allow us to keep the money there and let us talk things over with the landowners.”
