COVIN GTON & BURLING Mr. Wallace 0. Green Page Three December 17, 1980 torate with Lieutenant Captain Roetger, a gunboat commander acting on behalf of the Government of Germany. The report submitted by Loma Linda should be amended to reflect these historical facts. The Government of the Marshall Islands shares the view of Loma Linda that inter-atoll air transportation is critical to the delivery of the health care services required by P.L. 96-205 and, particularly, in relation to emergency referrals. The Health Care Plan assumes that such services will exist. The Government of the Marshall Islands has created the Airline of the Marshall Islands to provide inter-atoll air services and has undertaken an active program of airstrip construction on the outer islands. Unfor- tunately, recent decisions of the Government of the United States regarding the establishment of a Marshall Islands civil aviation authority and the certification and inspection of aircraft severely hinder the continuation and ex- pansion of air services and thereby deny crucial emergency services to the outer atolls. While refusing to permit a < Marshall Islands air authority to be established for aircraft inspection and certification, the United States also refuses to certify and inspect Marshallese aircraft itself. The Government of the Marshall Islands places top priority on the resolution of these issues and, in this connection, reiterates its repeated previous requests that the Department of the Interior make every effort to obtain from this Administration an executive order explicitly extending to the Marshall Islands in the pretermination period, pending the establishment of a Marshallese civil aviation authority, Titles V, VI, and VII of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, as amended. The Government of the Marshall Islands takes the most strenuous exception to the statement in paragraph three of the Executive Summary of the Loma Linda report that “[t]here are minimal radiation related health effects evident in the Marshalls." Similar statements also appear elsewhere in the report. As‘the representative of Loma Linda admitted in the meeting of December 10, 1980, the mandate of the Interior Department contract with Loma Linda did not ask the contractor to determine the extent of radiation related health effects and, therefore, Loma Linda made no independent medical effort to detect potentially radiation related health effects. The statement in the report apparently was based entirely on a cursory review of