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WASHINGTON-U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the chairman
of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, announced
today that he will hold a hearing Sept. 22 to examine the military`s
need to maintain vital training at the Navy`s bombing range facility
on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico.
"I am convinced it is absolutely necessary to maintain
the vital military training which has been conducted at Vieques
for the last 58 years," Inhofe said. "There is no other
adequate location in the Western Hemisphere where Navy pilots
can get this kind of necessary training. The Readiness Committee
hearing will focus on the importance of this facility and what
alternatives are available to assure that our military has the
critical training it needs in the future."
Inhofe addressed his concerns about the Vieques facility at
today`s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the confirmation
of Gen. Henry Shelton to serve a second term as Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Inhofe urged Shelton to use his influence
in the administration to support the vital training that takes
place at Vieques. Inhofe pointed out that the recent superb performance
of U.S. pilots in Yugoslavia was due in no small measure to the
training they received at Vieques immediately prior their deployment
into the conflict.
In his capacity as chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee,
Inhofe toured the Vieques range and visited with officials at
Roosevelt Road Naval Base in Puerto Rico on Aug. 24-25. On Aug.
26, Inhofe wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno, demanding that
the Justice Department take steps to enforce the law by prosecuting
trespassers who are currently occupying Vieques and endangering
themselves and others by removing ordnance from the base.
At today`s hearing, Inhofe said he was concerned that some
were seeking to use the current controversy for partisan motives.
"We should not turn this into a political football,"
Inhofe said. "The issue here is military readiness, which
is vital to our national interest and well being. If there are
problems, we can and should work them out. But we should not
make rash, politically-inspired decisions that will undermine
our military and hurt our security over the long term."
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THE
MIAMI HERALD - WIRE SERVICES
VIEQUES NEEDED,
U.S. MILITARY CHIEF SAYS
September 10, 1999
Copyright © 1999 THE MIAMI HERALD
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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress on
Thursday that U.S. forces must continue target practice on the
Puerto Rican island of Vieques until an alternative bombing range
is found.
Gen. Henry Shelton, warning that the Pentagon hasn't found
a suitable alternative site, told the Senate Armed Services Committee
that Atlantic-based units of the Navy and Marine Corps need to
practice air-to-ground bombardment, artillery fire and naval
gunfire in order to be combat-ready.
Live-fire combat training has been suspended on Vieques since
a bombing mishap in April killed a Puerto Rican civilian security
guard and injured four others.
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The Navy has offered to ask Congress for money to aid economic
development on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques and to assign
a full-time coordinator to assist in development efforts, according
to an economic plan submitted to a presidential task force.
The proposal, obtained by The Virginian-Pilot, offers to assign
teams of Navy engineers to work on the island's infrastructure
and train local residents in the construction trades. It also
says the service could give up some of its land on the island,
expand a program under which it leases other land to local farmers
and contract with Vieques firms for some construction work on
its Vieques facilities.
The 20-page plan, much of which is a rehash of unsuccessful
Navy efforts to aid in Vieques' development during the 1980s
and '90s, was prepared for a four-member task force looking into
the Navy's activities on the island.
The panel is expected to make recommendations to Defense Secretary
William S. Cohen and President Clinton later this month.
The Navy owns more than half of Vieques, a 33,000-acre island
just east of the main island of Puerto Rico. About 900 acres
near the eastern tip of the island are designated as a bombing
and artillery range, and thousands of sailors assigned to ships
based in Hampton Roads routinely train there before their overseas
deployments.
The Navy says the Vieques range is the only place in the Atlantic
where Marines can practice amphibious landings while shells fired
from nearby ships strike targets further inland. Such "live
fire" training is a close approximation to the way the two
services would expect to operate in wartime.
"Shifting portions of this training to other locations
would degrade the quality of training while increasing the (operational
pace) for our East Coast forces," Adm. Harold W. Gehman,
head of the Norfolk-based U.S. Atlantic Command, wrote Secretary
Cohen last month.
The training "is an absolute necessity to prepare our
ships, aircraft and air crews for ongoing operations, to enforce
the `no- fly' zone the U.S. and its allies have imposed over
southern Iraq since the Persian Gulf War of 1991," Marine
Gen. Anthony Zinni, head of the U.S. Central Command, said in
a similar letter.
Puerto Rico 's governor, Pedro Rossello, said the Navy's bombing
and shelling has limited the development of tourism and the fishing
industry and may be responsible for high rates of cancer on the
island.
The Navy report paints a different picture. "Between
1993 and 1995, the Navy undertook more than 20 major promotions
to support economic development on Vieques," it says. But
because the ultimate decisions to develop new businesses are
made by private entrepreneurs, "most of these promotional
efforts failed to generate any long-term economic activity."
"The lesson of the Navy's economic development initiatives
is that Vieques is a challenging place to do business,"
the report adds. A commercial ferry system excessively inflates
the cost of Vieques' products shipped to the main island, the
report says, and farmlands on the island can generate only a
relative handful of jobs.
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