A U.S. Department of the Navy spokesman re-echoed Friday their claim to military use rights at the Tinian port, but said they do need not see any current conflict between their these rights and leases granted by the Commonwealth Ports Authority to commercial development.<\/p>\n
The Navy\u2019s desire is that military interests are part of the future and existing planning for leases, according to Joint Region Marianas public affairs officer Tim Gorman in an email.<\/p>\n
Gorman was responding to questions from Saipan Tribune on the extent of their rights at the Tinian port, after a letter from Department of the Navy lawyer John Aguon to CPA lawyer Robert Torres surfaced, in which the former notes the Navy\u2019s concern that current and future development at the Tinian port\u2014including Bridge Investment Group\u2019s $120-million casino resort\u2014\u201cmay compromise DoD\u2019s various rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gorman said that while JRM has become aware that the CPA has recently leased certain real property at the Tinian port to a private enterprise, \u201cJRM does not see any current conflict with any CPA lease. \u201c <\/p>\n
\u201cJRM personnel communicate and work with their CNMI counterparts on a wide variety of issues on a regular basis,\u201d Gorman said. \u201cIn this instance, as the United States has certain rights contained in long-standing agreements with CNMI, such as the 1983 lease (as amended), JRM merely communicated its desire to continue to collaboratively work with the appropriate CNMI offices to help ensure that applicable DoD interests are part of the planning process in existing and future leasing actions. JRM will continue to work with our CPA colleagues to have fruitful discussions, just as we have regular discussions with our CNMI counterparts on other topics,\u201d added Gorman.<\/p>\n
In his January letter to CPA, Aguon reminds of these \u201clongstanding agreements between the CNMI and Defense\u201d that \u201cauthorize and guarantee DoD various military uses at the Tinian port and airport.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe desire to ensure these DoD rights are protected,\u201d Aguon said. His letter notes that that certain portions of the port are currently leased to Bridge Investment Group\u2014an investor building a reported casino resort on the Tinian wharf\u2014and that in the future, \u201cother portions of the Tinian port may be physically or legally encumbered by either Bridge or other private entities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A U.S. Department of the Navy spokesman re-echoed Friday their claim to military use rights…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,124,1191,200],"class_list":["post-219439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-cpa","tag-jrm","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}