> Military, protesters will head to Vieques
>
> Ivan Roman San Juan Bureau
>
> Published in The Orlando Sentinel on October 10, 2000
>
> SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- As 16,000 U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, and
> Marine personnel head to Vieques this week for the first joint
> training exercises since a fatal accident last April sparked a
> major battle over its use, protesters have their own plans.
>
> They include entering the Navy grounds, an act of civil
> disobedience that has gotten more than 600 actors, doctors,
> lawyers, mechanics, and politicians detained for trespassing.
>
> "We will do everything possible to get in the way of those
> exercises this month," said Robert Rabin, a spokesman for the
> Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. On the legal
> front, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., heading a coalition of
> environmentalists and labor groups, including several groups in
> Vieques, will file a lawsuit in federal court in San Juan today
> alleging human-rights and environmental violations on the island,
> including risks to 13 endangered species there.
>
> The resumption of the joint exercises on Vieques is specified in
> an agreement hammered out between the White House and the Puerto
> Rican government and announced Jan. 31.
>
> The directives stipulated that the Navy could only train for 90
> days out of the year, using dummy bombs, through May 1, 2003.
>
> Vieques voters will decide in a referendum to be held within the
> next 14 months whether the Navy will then leave for good or stay
> and use live ammunition in its training.
>
> But last week Congress defeated a key element of the agreement --
> the transfer of 8,000 acres of land on the western half of the
> island to Puerto Rico.
>
> A conference committee instead authorized release of only half the
> land, with the other half to go to the Department of the Interior.