Marshalls says

no to N-waste

By Giff Johnson

MAJURO - Bringing Taiwanese nuclear reactor waste to the Marshall Islands is not part of newly established diplomatic relations between the two nations, the Marshalls Foreign Minister told the country in a national ly broadcast interview in early December.

His comments were backed up by a Cabinet declaration on December 4 that the Marshall Islands will not import low or high level nuclear waste into the country.

Foreign Minister Phillip Muller, in a telephone interview from Honolulu with the government radio station, said unequivocally that nuclear waste is not part of the deal with Taiwan and is not on the government’s agenda.

“I don’t know where that kind of an idea came from,” Muller said.

Officials in Taipei have also denied that nuclear waste exports to the Marshalls are under renewed consid eration.

In the mid-19905, officials from the Marshalls and Taipower - Taiwan’s state-run nuclear power agency - held repeated discussions about nuclear waste storage in the islands.

The plan was shelved when Marshall Islands President Imata Kabua declared a freeze on the nuclear waste plan in mid-1997 in response to growing opposition at home and abroad.

However, Cabinet approval in March 1998 of a feasibility study appeared to have renewed the govern ment’s interest in the plan.

But then in December the Cabinet declared a total ban on importing waste. Instead of nuclear waste, Marshalls and Taiwan officials focused their discussions on economic development and investment ventures, Muller said in nationally broadcast remarks. ■