This has sparked a leading US Senator to intervene to reverse the decision, and prompted concern at home.

Until now, Federal officials and leaders of the Bikini Council met each year to agree on a withdrawal, usually six to seven million US dollars.

The Council then decided how to spend it, subject to a Department of the Interior veto.

Last August, the Bikini Council asked the Department of the Interior to transfer full control of the Trust Fund to them.

The Department of the Interior agreed and turned over control on November 21st.

As soon as the decision took effect, US$11 million was withdrawn from the US$59 million fund.

Now Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska plans legislation to restore federal supervision.

In a letter to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Murkowski rebuked the Department of the Interior for the unilateral decision to wash its hands of trust fund management.

Murkowski chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee which exercises oversight on United States policy and funding for the Marshall Islands.

She objected to the fact that the sum of money withdrawn this year is almost double the amount usually agreed on.

And there was no agreement on how it would be spent.

Murkowski has drafted legislation to impose what she described as a reasonable limit on annual withdrawals.

Bikini Mayor Anderson Jilas told the Marshall Islands Journal: "We are free to determine our own destiny and every Bikinian should be proud of this new era."

But former mayor Alsen Kelen expressed concern about the US$11 million withdrawal: "The money belongs to every Bikinian alive, not just to council members," he told the Marshall Islands Journal.

Source

• RNZ
• Hawai'i Public Radio
• Image: i imgur

The Marshalls is suing the five `established' nuclear weapons states recognised in the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) the US, Russia, which inherited the Soviet arsenal, China, France and the UK.

It is also suing three countries outside the NPT who have declared nuclear arsenals, India, Pakistan and North Korea, and the one undeclared nuclear weapons state, Israel.

The Guardian reports that in the unprecedented legal action, the Marshall Islands accuses the nuclear weapons states of a "flagrant denial of human justice".

It argues it is justified in taking the action because of the harm it suffered as a result of the nuclear arms race.

The Pacific chain of islands, including Bikini Atoll and Enewetak, was the site of 67 nuclear tests from 1946 to 1958, including the 'Bravo shot', a 15-megaton device equivalent to a thousand Hiroshima blasts, detonated in 1954.

The Marshallese islanders say they have been suffering serious health and environmental effects ever since.

Source

• Countercurrents.org
• The Guardian
• Image: 4.bp.blogspot.com

Addressing the media in Tahiti after touring the area, Commodore Anne Cullerre says that platforms have been built on Mururoa atoll, should a coral cliff collapse trigger a huge wave and force the 35 military personnel deployed there to seek safety.

Cullerre says radiation from the former nuclear weapons test site poses no risks.

John Doom, national coordinator, Association of Former Nuclear Site Workers of Mururoa, says he had the information that a laboratory was starting to be built at Mururoa for the inspection of seabed resources in French Polynesia.

The head of the Moruroa e tatou veterans organisation in French Polynesia, Roland Oldham, says allowing access to the atoll would quell claims and counterclaims about work on the atoll.

Source

• Radio Australia International
• Radio New Zealand International
• Radio New Zealand International
• Image: The Epoch Times

Murorua e Tatou (MET), the Nuclear Association in French Polynesia, says the issue was detailed in a leaked report from the Ministry of Defence to the French government dated March 2010.

MET president, Roland Oldham said "We've been trying to raise the consciousness of the people - our own people and our government and all the rest about this really frightening thing that could happen if actually one part of Murorua would collapse."

MET wants independent experts to be allowed to conduct a study to provide more information about the danger of the atoll collapsing.

Oldham, told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program that radioactive material could be released into the Pacific Ocean if the atoll were to collapse.

"Just in that little area there is over maybe twelve underground tests in that area and we have to remember that France have done altogether 193 nuclear test explosions in Murorua," he said.

Source

• Radio Australia
• Image: The Epoch Times

Japan's Atomic Energy Agency predicts that radioactive caesium from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant will travel four thousand kilometres through the Pacific Ocean within one year and reach Hawaii within three years.

While the agency believes the contamination levels will be low, the Hawaii-based centre says its not yet known what damage will be done in the region.

Sources

• PINA
• Image: AllVoices

PCC General Secretary Fei Tevi says the continued silence from the PIFS undermines the enormous works of the founding members of the Forum in their vision to safeguard and protect the Pacific from nuclear contamination

"As the designers and custodians of the 1985 South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (also known as the Treaty of Rarotonga), the PIFS has been mandated to protect the Pacific region from nuclear contamination and must make strong it's calls on Japan to account for the way it is handling this nuclear catastrophe," Tevi said in a statement.

Source

Samoa Observer
Image: theboldcorsicanflame.wordpress.com