MARSHALL ISLANDS - ILES MARSHALL - ISLAS MARSHALL

His Excellency Laurence N. Edwards, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Mission to the United Nations of the Republic of the Marshall Islands

It is a great honour for me to congratulate you on your election to serve as President of this great event. On behalf of the President of the Marshall Islands, we wholeheartedly thank the Italian Government and people for their generous hospitality and also thank FAO for the excellent preparations.

The provision of a safe and nutritious diet to all people is a prime concern for all countries. We all accept the moral obligation to alleviate starvation, to do our best to prevent nutritional diseases at the national level. But for my country this whole situation is made much more difficult, due to the high level of radiation contamination that has been left behind from the Trusteeship period. This is why the Marshall Islands has reported to the General Assembly that the South Pacific Forum, once again, reaffirmed the existence of a special responsibility towards those peoples of the former United Nations Trust Territories administered by the United States, the Marshall Islands, which has been adversely affected as a result of the nuclear weapons tests conducted during the period of the Trust Territories.

This responsibility includes safe resettlement of the displaced human population and the restoration of the economic productivity of the affected areas. As you know, Mr. President, this is a matter of extreme importance to the Marshall Islands and we are very concerned that urgent progress needs to be made.

The acknowledged role of the international community is now being given a presence in the Marshall Islands by the visiting mission of the IAEA. The mission met with His Excellency President Amata Kabua, to give him a complete briefing on the scope of the nature of the agency's visit to the Marshall Islands. My government welcomes the open and transparent manner of that agency in conducting its work as it ensures that there are no false expectations on either side.

I can assure you that we have made sure that the limited facilities we could provide were extended to the fullest to accommodate the Agency. We made sure that the Agency had access to all the damaged nuclear weapon test sites in the Marshall Islands, as well as the current storage site on Runit Island. This is merely a concrete dome covering a large amount of topsoil scraped off from some of the test sites. The dome has not been monitored for a very long time, and we are concerned about the safety of the site. We feel that the Agency, as part of its work with the Marshall Islands, will be able to give us better information upon which to plan our future responses to the site.

The result of this nuclear contamination has had a number of effects on people and on our subsistence agriculture. Many of the agricultural products which we rely on have been seriously affected. For example, arrow-root which used to grow on many of the contaminated islands has now died out. In most of the other islands, this particular plant species no longer bears any edible fruit. There have also been effects on our lagoon fisheries. Many species that were considered edible have at times become poisonous to eat. The symptoms resulting from eating this poisonous fish are nausea, vomiting, fever, and diarrhoea. These have also been documented in French Polynesia after tests there. We cannot escape the strong evidence that there is a link between this problem and the testing itself.

We also know that the staple foods which grow in our country are like sponges for any mineral or nutrient. In this regard, we have been advised by many experts on the use of plutonium as a way to inhibit uptake of radioactive cesium. But as delegations can all imagine this is a very expensive process for a small country like mine to undertake. We are hopeful that this Summit will galvanize international support for a concrete action-oriented proposal such as this.

This could be of great benefit for us, which leads me to the concept of poor soil agriculture, and I would like to elaborate a little bit on this need for expanded research into this important field. In the Marshall Islands we have mainly coral sand soil which is not the most productive soil there is. Nevertheless, we have been able to survive on the meagre fruits that it would yield for thousands of years. But in the new world economy, we need to look into new ways of utilization and how to improve the use of our soil. In this regard we hope that this Summit will indeed produce some valuable results for us so that existing research can be made available and further work can be encouraged.

I do wish to raise a concern about the process which led us to the Summit. When the United Nations General Assembly unanimously agreed to convene the Summit last year at the 50^th Session we were given assurances that those small delegations without representation in Rome would be assisted by attendance at the Preparatory Meeting of the Summit itself. We are grateful for the assistance to be here today. But at the crucial negotiations which occurred in the months before - we were not privy to this important discussion. It is of great concern that we may have been presented with a document produced by FAO insiders and special interests represented here in Rome. It has not been a transparent process.

This being said, my delegation does find much merit in the paper which was agreed to by the experts on 31 October, which is now before us. There are many aspects related to food security for all which we feel are extremely important. Recognition of the influence which more equitable export conditions from developing countries to developed countries can have on overall import improvement in food security, is also a welcome development.

It is, therefore, the intention of my delegation to support the adoption of the Rome Declaration and we hope to work closely with the interested delegations of the United Nations agencies, especially FAO, and I assure you, Mr. President, that the Government of the Marshall Islands will place high priority on the implementation of this Agreement.