Vieques To Vote For Bombing Range?

The head of the Navy's Southern Command is predicting that the people of Puerto Rico will vote to allow the U.S. Navy to keep its bombing range on Puerto Rico's Vieques Island.

"Their best future lies with the continued relationship with the U.S. Navy," Rear Adm. Kevin Green said in a June 1 interview.

"It isn't always the loudest voices that carry the day," said Green. "It isn't always the people who are always in the public eye who really represent the wishes, the aspiration and desires of any community."

Green said Vieques' 9,300 residents will vote to keep the Navy's premier Atlantic fleet bombing range despite a year of anti-Navy protests and Gov. Pedro Rossello's own prediction Tuesday that the Navy will lose.

The referendum is to be held as early as this August or as late as February 2002, with the date set by the Navy. If the Navy loses, it would have to leave by May 2003. If it wins, it can use live ordnance.

Thirty-one people were detained for trespassing on the bombing range Thursday.

Resentment over the Navy's presence on Vieques boiled over in April 1999, when a jet dropped two 500-pound bombs off-target, killing a civilian security guard at the bombing range. The Navy called a moratorium on bombing, and dozens of protesters occupied the range.

They were cleared in a federal operation that began May 4, and the Navy resumed training under a deal between President Clinton and Rossello that calls for the Vieques referendum and the use of inert ordnance by the Navy until after the vote.

The Navy has used Vieques as a bombing range for more than 50 years and says no other site can provide the same realistic training.

AP A dummy bomb lies in front of a makeshift chapel built by Vieques protesters.

Green said protests won't stop the Navy from training. "My sense is that this is an entirely futile and unhelpful approach to dealing with the political issue," he said.

If the Navy stays, it will create job training programs and try to bring high technology businesses to Vieques, where unemployment is 14 percent, Green said.

The Navy Rear Admiral disputed claims by anti-bombing range activists that the Navy exercises damage Vieques' environment and contribute to the island's cancer rate. The most recent study by the local health department, done in the late 1980s, showed the island's cancer rate to be more than 20 percent higher than the Puerto Rican average.