WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st July, 2023) The United States still has a moral obligation to support health care, clean-up efforts and environmental restoration across the islands of the Central Pacific where it carried out more than three score nuclear tests after World War II and further compensation is still being discussed, US Presidential Envoy Joseph Yun said on Thursday.
"We have tested 67 nuclear devices between the late 1940s and the late 1950s," Yun told a meeting at the Heritage Foundation. "Radiation, I believe, is still there. Damages, I believe, are still there. And I believe there are lingering health effects too. I also believe we have a legal responsibility as well for what we did."
Further, US compensation for the health problems and environmental damage caused by the tests are currently being negotiated as part of the current compact talks with the Marshall Islands, Yun noted.
"That is part of the compact package that we have discussed with the Marshall Islands," he said.
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests including many ultra-powerful thermonuclear ones in the Marshall Islands. Some 23 of the tests were carried out at Bikini Atoll, and 44 near Enewetak Atoll, but the radioactive fallout from them spread throughout the island chain.
