Some fear China could win from US spat with Marshall Islands

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — For decades, the tiny Marshall Islands has been a stalwart American ally.

is refusing to engage the Marshallese on claims for environmental and health damage caused by dozens of nuclear tests it carried out in the 1940s and ’50s, including a huge thermonuclear blast on Bikini Atoll.

should face up to its responsibility to restore the environmental damage it caused with its nuclear tests.

It said China was willing to engage with the Marshall Islands and other Pacific island nations on the basis of mutual respect and cooperation under the “One China Principle,” in which Taiwan is viewed as part of China.

James Matayoshi, the mayor of Rongelap Atoll on the Marshall Islands, said he and hundreds of others have remained displaced from their atoll since the nuclear tests and want to see it revitalized.

Like many others on the Marshall Islands, Matayoshi believes a U.S.

He said his late mother was pregnant at the time of one massive nuclear blast and got exposed to radiation that was the equivalent of 25,000 X-rays before giving birth to a stillborn baby.

Marshallese Senator David Paul — who is on the islands’ negotiating committee and also represents Kwajalein Atoll, which is home to a major U.S.

“Everyone knows the negotiations at that time were not fair or equitable,” Paul said.

Various estimates put the true cost of the damage at about $3 billion, including for repairs to a massive nuclear waste facility known as the Cactus Dome which environmentalists say is leaking toxic waste into the ocean.

State Department said the Indo-Pacific is central to U.S.

“We are prioritizing achieving success in the negotiations related to the Compacts with the Freely Associated States as a regional foreign policy objective,” the department said.

Paul said the American approach needs to change

has the legal and moral obligation to make sure they clean up this debris,” Paul said