Lt. Gov. Jesus R. Sablan, the chief negotiator to the 902 talks, expressed support yesterday for the resumption of the bilateral discussion with the United States as he stressed the need to protect local interests as provided under the Covenant.<\/p>\n
But he said such a move is a prerogative of Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio for the CNMI side and President Clinton on the U.S. side who must reach a mutual agreement on the re-opening of the consultation talks.<\/p>\n
The governor last week said he favors resumption of the meeting in light of several issues that need to be discussed on the table, although he is not certain whether the White House also prefers holding the 902 talks now.<\/p>\n
According to Mr. Sablan, the CNMI government has made attempts over the past few months to talk about a possible resumption with federal officials to no avail.<\/p>\n
He said the local team, which is composed of leaders of the Legislature and business sector representatives, is still intact and is prepared to discuss matters with their U.S. counterpart.<\/p>\n
The talks, which is part of the Covenant agreement with the United States, was held in January 1999, the first such discussion in over six years.<\/p>\n
However, the meeting bogged down due to failure to agree on major issues such as immigration, minimum wage and customs — issues that have long been a source of rift between CNMI and Washington.<\/p>\n
The Clinton administration has been pushing federal takeover of these functions which the Covenant granted to the local government — a move that island leaders say will impact the CNMI’s economy.<\/p>\n
Edward B. Cohen, the president’s special emissary during last year’s talks, even recommended a new package of federal takeover measures last December, calling labor and immigration reforms implemented by the Tenorio administration a failure. He renewed his attacks when he recently resigned from the post<\/p>\n
But Mr. Sablan again defended the islands from such criticisms, noting that the Commonwealth has made “progress” to correct perceived mistakes in areas such as working and living conditions of nonresident workers here.<\/p>\n
“The CNMI has instituted reforms which may not be perfect, but its shows that we are committed in improving human rights and workers conditions on the islands,” he told reporters in an interview.<\/p>\n
He also maintained that the 902 talks is still the proper venue to raise issues affecting bilateral, underscoring the need to protect local rights and interests under the Covenant.<\/p>\n
“I hope it will preserve and enhance the Covenant provisions for the CNMI,” added Mr. Sablan.<\/p>\n
The consultation process provided under Section 902 allows both governments to iron out differences set within the context of Covenant which established the islands’ political relationship with the United States.<\/p>\n
Mr. Tenorio has said that recent efforts to bring issues affecting the CNMI to the nation’s capital have failed to draw needed attention, citing Mr. Clinton’s Interagency Group on Insular Areas which has brushed aside major concerns raised by the governor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lt. Gov. Jesus R. Sablan, the chief negotiator to the 902 talks, expressed support yesterday for the resumption of the bilateral discussion with the United States as he stressed the need to protect local interests as provided under the Covenant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52972","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}