Diplomat charged with

[Headlines

Marshall Islands

Kabua has it all

Now it is official, Amata Kabua has it all. Long regarded as the most powerful, and the richest person in the Marshalls, Amata Kabua, is (like Bill Clinton) both the head of state, and the head of government in his role as President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Kabua is the only President in the history of the Marshalls, having held the position for 25 years. The President is elected by the members of the one-house parliament, the Nitijela, a body where there is no organised opposition. President Kabua exercises the powers of prime ministers in other island nations.

But, until recently, there was a distinction that Kabua lacked, and that was a clear, legal title to the traditional leadership in his islands. Now a Honolulu judge, Samuel King, has ruled that Amata Kabua, and not his uncle, Kabua Kabua, is the legally-recognised paramount chief.

It is not just a family squabble over an old title - millions of dollars rode on the decision, because the traditional chiefship in question included jurisdiction over the Kwajaleni atoll, which is where US missiles plop down after their long voyages from the Mainland. And the US pays millions of dollars in rent annually to the Kwajalein landowners, including the Kabuas.

The dispute wound up in a Honolulu court because of the Mainland moneys. The judge ruled that the Marshalls parliament (which Amata Kabua has dominated for decades) had decided earlier that Amata Kabua was the paramount chief, and he, the judge, was in no position to second guess the parliament. It is reported that millions were spent in attorney’s fees during the ten-year-long battle. The dispute itself, according to Washington Pacific Report, date back more than 90 years to an inter-family dispute about which of two sons should be the paramount chief - a dispute started long before missiles and atom bombs and the flow of funds from

Washington, D.C.

All of this, a fairly new seat in the United Nations for his country, and a strong margin in the last election for Amata Kabua.

One could say that Amata Kabua is doing well.

Diplomat charged with

fraud and misconduct

A FORMER Marshall Islands diplomat has been charged with 78 counts of fraud and misconduct allegedly committed during

a posting to Fiji.

A criminal indictment was filed in the Marshall Islands High Court last month against Bruce Kijiner, former first secretary of the Marshall Islands embassy in Suva.

He is charged with 58 counts of embezzlement, 13 counts of misconduct in public office and seven counts of forgery resulting from the unlawful use of $F66,000 ($A63,000) from bank accounts in Suva between October 1991 and September 1993, court documents said.

The charges follow an audit investigation carried out by the

Attorney-General’s department.