Puerto Rico Seeks End to Navy Use of Outlying Island as Target Range

Puerto Rico wants the Navy to stop shelling an outlying island where 9,000 people live, and the Pentagon opened hearings Friday to decide what to do about it.

The Navy contends Vieques Island “is of vital importance to our national defense policy and impacts Navy readiness” at an important Atlantic military training facility.

But to Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Rossello, who was Friday’s first witness before a four-member special commission examining the Navy’s use of the island and alternatives, “the issue is the impact that these exercises have on a community of U.S. citizens.”

Navy officials are to present the service’s position to the special commission July 23, after completion of a separate review ordered by Navy Secretary Richard Danzig. The commission’s recommendations to Defense Secretary William S. Cohen are due in six weeks.

The crisis over the island was sparked by the April 19 death of a Puerto Rican security guard for the Navy, David Sanes Rodriguez, who was killed when two bombs dropped by an F-18 fighter missed their target within the Navy range.

About 30 protesters are occupying a live-fire area to demand that the Navy get out. The Navy has imposed a moratorium on live-fire exercises on Vieques after the bombing accident.

The Navy says Sanes was the first casualty in more than 50 years of training exercises on the 51-square-mile island. The Navy controls about two-thirds of the island, which is eight miles east of Puerto Rico.

The protesters, whose numbers swell on weekends and include children, are occupying an area littered with unexploded shells, Navy spokesman Brian Cullin said.

“It is an extremely dangerous situation,” he said. The Navy has no plans to forcibly remove the protesters, he said, although “ultimately, they will have to leave.”

Rossello and Norma Burgos, Puerto Rico’s secretary of state, presented the Pentagon panel a report by a Puerto Rican commission that concluded the Navy must leave and turn over the territory for use of Vieques residents.

Rossello, whose party favors statehood for Puerto Rico, said the demand for the Navy to leave has near-unanimous support among the territory’s usually divided political groups. He supported a continued military presence in Puerto Rico, whose 3.8 million residents have U.S. citizenship and may serve in the military but have only a nonvoting representative in Congress and no vote in presidential elections.

The governor earlier had demanded only an end to live-fire exercises but has now adopted the commission’s conclusions as Puerto Rico’s official position. Claiming that Vieques residents are denied “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he said the Navy also is destroying the island’s ecology and economic potential.

Navy spokesman Cullin said the Puerto Rican study was “skewed against the Navy.” He released a Navy “fact sheet” that accused some Puerto Rican politicians of undertaking a campaign to discredit the Navy and also accused Puerto Rican media of publishing misleading reports on the controversy.

He said the Navy was proud of its efforts to protect the environment on Vieques and of its safety record on the island.

“Since the 1940s, the civilian population off the range has never been at risk,” the Navy said in response to the Puerto Rican commission’s conclusions.

President Clinton will decide the island’s immediate future, although Congress could also take action.