LATIN AMERICA: U.S. Navy Expects Annual Aid Missions

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Humanitarian missions to Latin America and South America, like the one currently under way with medical and construction personnel aboard the amphibious assault ship Boxer, will become an annual event, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said Friday.

Adm. Robert F. Willard, in an interview here, said that under the Navy’s new maritime strategy such missions are assuming a place at ‘the core of what we do.’

During a just-completed 13-day operation in El Salvador, the Boxer specialists, the U.S. Public Health Service, Project Hope and Salvadoran personnel saw about 8,000 patients for primary medical care. Seabees worked on school construction and road repair.

There is an obvious diplomatic element to the trip. El Salvador’s president, Elias Antonio Saca, visited the Boxer, as did senior officers of the Salvadoran military.

After a similar stop in Peru, the Boxer is due back in San Diego in late June. Meanwhile, the hospital ship Mercy is on a mission to the Philippines, Vietnam, Micronesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea. But not all the Navy’s gestures have been welcomed: the government of Myanmar rebuffed an offer of help after its devastating cyclone.

Future trips could be in either in the Carribean or Pacific. The goal in all of the missions, Willard said, is provide training for host-country professionals and ‘structures that will last.’

Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: Admiral Robert F. Willard.