December 4, 1999
President Halts Target Practice by Navy on Puerto Rican Island
Related Articles
Navy to Train Off Puerto Rico With Live-Fire Issue Unsettled (Dec. 1, 1999)
Panel Backs Firing Exercises in Puerto Rico (Oct. 19, 1999)
By ELIZABETH BECKER
ASHINGTON -- President Clinton on Friday ordered a halt to
live-fire military training on the
Puerto Rican island of Vieques and
an end to all exercises there within
five years unless local residents
agree to an extension.
Even though Clinton rejected
alternative recommendations by the
Navy and a special presidential panel to resume live firing, his decision
failed to satisfy demands by Puerto
Rican leaders for an unambiguous
declaration that bombing will never
resume on Vieques and for a specific
date that the Navy will close down
the firing range and leave the island.
"I am extremely disappointed
with the plan proposed by the president," Gov. Pedro J. Rosselló said at
a news conference in San Juan.
"It is
not acceptable."
Clinton accepted the recommendation of Secretary of Defense
William S. Cohen, who has been trying to end the seven-month deadlock
between Puerto Rico and the Navy
over the island that the Navy considers the indispensable "crown jewel"
of its East Coast training operations.
The area is the largest naval site in
which it can conduct simultaneous
live-fire exercises involving ships,
planes and marines engaged in amphibious assaults.
The compromise plan announced
on Friday postpones several major decisions while the Navy and the governor of Puerto Rico negotiate whether
the military will resume exercises in
March with inert, or dummy, ordnance that contains no explosives.
The Navy also offered the island a
$40 million economic revival project
to demonstrate that the service understands it must "repair relations"
with the people of Vieques.
As a result of Friday's agreement,
the aircraft carrier Eisenhower and
its battle group, including a Marine
detachment, will go on its next assignment to the Mediterranean in
February and then on to the Persian
Gulf without training on Vieques.
Instead, the Navy and Marines
have put together a "patchwork" of
training at bases in Florida and
North Carolina for pilots to drop
bombs and marines to storm the
beach, as well as temporary naval
artillery training on Cape Wrath in
Scotland.
"These arrangements will not provide training as good as that obtainable in Vieques," said Secretary of
the Navy Richard Danzig. "But we
believe that not pressing the issue at
this moment in Puerto Rico is the
most productive route for resuming
training in Vieques over the longer
term."
All military exercises were suspended in April when a civilian Puerto Rican guard, David Sanes Rodríguez, was killed after Marine jets
dropped bombs that unintentionally
hit an observation tower.
Since then protesters occupied
large sections of the 900-acre range
that has been used since 1941 for
what the Navy considers essential
training for combat readiness.
For
decades there have been complaints
about Navy activity on the island,
and in 1983 the Navy signed a memorandum with Puerto Rico promising
to change its behavior.
The encampment of protesters,
who vowed to remain on the range,
which is strewn with unspent explosives, played into Friday's decision.
Attorney General Janet Reno
strongly argued against any immediate resumption of exercises that
would require federal marshals to
forcibly remove the demonstrators,
according to senior administration
officials.
"Secretary Cohen called the president earlier this week and said his
judgment was based on the strong
view of the attorney general that it
would not be a manageable situation,
given the emotions that exist right
now," a senior administration official said.
Vieques has become one of the few
issues that have united the citizens of
Puerto Rico, who have actively campaigned to place it on the political
agenda in the presidential campaign
and in New York State politics.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is
running for the Senate from New
York, became an early supporter of
Puerto Rico's side in the debate.
Mrs. Clinton declared in October that
there should be "an immediate and
permanent end to the bombing,"
which she said "put the people of
Vieques at risk, degraded the environment and hampered economic
development."
Her expected opponent, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, said
he had no comment on the issue,
which has become a rallying point
for New York's large Puerto Rican
population.
Vice President Al Gore said
through a spokesman Friday that he
wanted the Vieques range closed.
"The vice president still favors
shutting down the firing range and
believes the Pentagon and Puerto
Rican leaders should focus on a transition plan to bring that about," a
spokesman for Gore said.
In testimony in October, Rosselló told Congress that the live firing training on the island had created
an unacceptably high unemployment
rate for its residents, who have also
had health problems, including a
higher cancer rate. He also said that
"bombs away, day after day" had
threatened the coral reef and wildlife
of the island.
This fall, a presidential panel
agreed that the Navy had been an
imperfect neighbor, and in a news
conference Friday, Adm. Jay L. Johnson, Chief of Naval Operations, said
the Navy was "committed to rolling
up our sleeves and working with the
good people of Vieques to ensure that
we can continue to use that range."
"Vieques is important to the United States Navy and the United States
Marine Corps," the admiral said.
"It's the crown jewel training experience for us. We don't want to lose it,
and we're willing to work to keep it."
The training area in and around
Vieques is the major training area
for the Navy on the East Coast. The
equivalent on the West Coast is the
San Clemente Training Area north of
San Diego, where naval battle groups
can also conduct live fire training for
artillery, aircraft and amphibious
landings but on a much smaller
scale.
Cohen emphasized that his
first responsibility was "to ensure
that American military forces are
well trained and ready for the dangerous missions we routinely ask
them to perform."
But Admiral Johnson admitted
that when the Eisenhower battle
group left Norfolk this February, it
would not be combat ready until it
received further training in the field.
Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the
Maine Republican who is on the
Armed Services Committee, criticized this plan as "a risky approach
that will deploy two U.S. battle
groups before their training is complete" and they have been battle-proven. "The Pentagon's proposal
jeopardizes American forces, as it is
clearly not in our national interest to
deploy troops that are not fully
trained," she said.
But Puerto Rican politicians said
there was little chance that the
Navy would be asked to stay at Vieques. They contended that since the
Navy had been able to find alternative temporary sites in Scotland, and
earlier in Sardinia, for their live-fire
exercises, there was no need to reconsider Vieques.
"If the Eisenhower is not here, it is because they have
other places to do that type of training, and it proves our point," said
Alfonso Aguilar, press spokesman
for Governor Rosselló. "It is very
difficult for the Navy to continue
saying that Vieques is indispensable."
Rubén Berrios-Martínez, a member of the Puerto Rican Independence Party and a friend of Clinton, said in Vieques that Friday's decision was only a skirmish in a larger
battle. "It is a long war, and it will
not be won until there is an agreement on not one more bomb at anytime, forever, and a schedule to
leave," he said.
To achieve that end the demonstrators are expected to remain on
the Vieques firing range.
Their presence could upset future
negotiations that Clinton hopes
to begin in Washington between Governor Rosselló, the Navy and senior
Pentagon officials.
Agents from the Federal Bureau
of Investigation's crisis unit, the Hostage Rescue Team, quietly visited
Vieques to begin preparations in
case the president decided to accept
the Navy's recommendation and begin immediate live-fire exercises on
the island.
Under that plan, Ms. Reno
would have been required to dispatch
federal agents to the island quickly
to clear protesters from the range.
But Ms. Reno and the director of
the F.B.I., Louis J. Freeh, strongly
objected to the idea, law-enforcement officials said. They advised the
White House and Pentagon officials
that any plan that required federal
agents to clear protesters from the
range would present a serious risk to
agents and demonstrators.
