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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The governor of Puerto Rico Friday
expressed his willingness to support the Pentagon's limited use
of the island of Vieques if the Clinton administration abandons
it as a bombing range and cedes the property to the commonwealth.
Gov. Pedro Rossello, in an interview with The Herald, said the
Department of Defense could continue to use a counter-drug spy
radar and permit Marines to practice rifle-shooting assaults
on the island. But he expressed confidence that the bombing will
not resume.
Rossello spoke to The Herald fresh from testifying on the
Vieques controversy before the Senate Armed Services Committee
in Washington. The issue has united statehood advocates like
the governor and independence supporters such as lawmaker Ruben
Berrios, who has staged a six-month sit-in that stopped the bombing.
The governor rushed home from Washington Wednesday to oversee
emergency preparations for Hurricane Jose, which swept east and
spared his commonwealth significant damage.
BOMBING SLAMMED
He said confidently, and repeatedly, that Navy and
NATO aircraft had dropped their last bomb on six-decade-old ranges
on the 20-mile-long island. Two-thirds of it is owned by the
U.S. government; the rest is home to 9,300 civilians.
"At some point the Navy will leave Vieques,'' he said. "The
destructive bombing that has gone on for 58 years will not be
resumed. If the Navy wants to drag this out further, that's fine
with us -- as long as there is no bombing of Vieques.''
A presidential panel recommended the opposite this week --
advocating that training missions resume for five years while
the military finds other test sites. President Clinton must now
decide the fate of Vieques. He ordered the special study after
a fighter jet mistakenly dropped a bomb on a watchtower April
19, killing civilian guard David Sanes, 35.
Although confident that the bombing would not resume, he said
he was not privy to what the president would decide -- or when
he would announce it.
"There will be no bombing. You can have Marines landing
and shooting with their rifles,'' he said, adding, "that
can be worked out.''
'RETHINK TRAINING'
Rossello said, however, that the Navy should rethink
its training doctrine because no U.S. force had met opposition
in an amphibious assault since troops led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur
attacked Inchon, Korea. "Maybe this is a stimulus for the
Navy to look toward the future and not the past.''
Vieques is also home to Over the Horizon Radar, expected to
be operational early next year. Invented in the Cold War to track
Soviet aircraft from Alaska, the Miami-based Southern Command
established two stations in Puerto Rico, one on Vieques, to spy
on drug activity across South America.
Rossello described the radar system as "indispensable''
to the drug war. It can and should stay on Vieques, he said,
to underscore Puerto Rico's commitment to the U.S. war on drugs.
"Our actions speak eloquently . . . We have been proactively
seeking a participation in the national defense.''
At least one senator threatened this week to shut down the
U.S. Navy Base at Roosevelt Roads, on mainland Puerto Rico facing
Vieques, if the bombing ranges were closed.
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
Rossello was unable to say how many millions of dollars the
base contributes to his island's economy.
But, he said, a bombing-free Vieques, cleaned up by U.S. forces
before they ceded it to Puerto Rico, "could become an incredibly
attractive tourism destination on a level that would compete
worldwide.''
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Puerto Ricans, Pentagon To Discuss Bomb-Range
Dispute
10/28/1999
Dow Jones Int'l News
(Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
WASHINGTON
(AP)-- Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Rossello will send his chief of
staff to the Pentagon Monday for talks aimed at breaking a deadlock
over the U.S. Navy's use of its bombing range on the Puerto Rican
island of Vieques.
Pentagon spokesman
Kenneth Bacon said the Rossello aide, Angel Morey, will meet
Rudy deLeon, the undersecretary of defense for personnel, to
discuss a recommendation by a presidential panel that the Navy
be allowed to resume limited training on Vieques but pull out
within five years.
Bacon said
it was possible that Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the four service chiefs would
travel to San Juan to discuss the matter with Puerto Rican officials.
"That's
certainly a reasonable suggestion," Bacon said, adding that
a decision on that would depend on the outcome of Monday's talks.
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