KUAM News
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
By Therese Hart
Variety News Staff
by Clynt Ridgell, KUAM News
The Association of Pacific Island Legislatures has been on Guam for the last few days, touring the island and meeting with various local and military officials as they held a session locally to discuss the military buildup. Chuuk State legislative speaker Florencio Harper says the visit to Guam provides an opportunity to meet with some of his constituents who reside on the island as well as an opportunity to learn more about the military buildup.
"Our people will be receiving some advantage from it or benefit from it by coming to Guam and working with the military and lots of things that can be also given to us through this military buildup," Harper said.
Kosraen senator Gibson Siba agrees that this visit was an especially important one in light of the military buildup, saying, "We anticipate working together with the Government of Guam and we anticipate the spill offs of the benefits that the Guam has and we mainly we came here to basically get our people ready to provide labor and buildup, our skill buildup, our people skill."
APIL vice-president Hawaiian senator Kalani English says that this meeting was focused on the military buildup, which is why they wanted to have this meeting on Guam. "So Hawaii has had experience with that and the Freely Associated States are looking at employment opportunities and, of course, we want to hear the concerns from the people of Guam on how this buildup will impact their lives," the senator noted. Senator English additionally says that Hawaii has had and is still experiencing the impacts of military buildup on their very own island, which is why he doesn't believe that the Aloha State will get the Marines that are slated to move to Guam, despite the attempts of Hawaiian congressman Neil Abercrombie.
Said English, "I've not heard very much about it, but you know, nothing surprises me out of congress anymore. So you know Congress may do something, but from what I understand the move is slated to come to Guam. In Hawaii, we're facing a lot of challenges with the military as well as issues of depleted uranium military maneuvers, live practices, live firing, cleanup after the use of the land return of the land to the indigenous people - after they use it how can they reuse it when it's not clean we have Kahoolawe, which is part of my district. It used to be a military the island was a training target for the military and they still haven't cleaned it up.
"So these are some of the issues we face in Hawaii, so any movement of troops to Hawaii. I'm sure the people of Hawaii will bring up all of these questions and say how will we deal with this first?"
The APIL is an organization that acts much like a legislative body that attempts to set cooperative policies between the islands through the adoption of resolutions. Some of the resolutions introduced during this session include resolutions dealing with economic development such as resolutions that request the U.S. Government to cause major us energy players servicing the pacific to conduct cooperative research and development on energy efficiency and renewable energy services. There are also resolutions to request the U.S. to provide incentives for major us businesses to reduce their costs of operations in the Pacific.
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