Puerto Rico Bombing to End in 2003

Navy to Seek New Site For Training Exercises

President Bush plans to stop Navy bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in 2003, ending a 60-year practice that has produced angry protests and escalating resentment from residents who complain it is dangerous.

Navy Secretary Gordon R. England plans to announce today that training will end in two years and that an outside panel will be charged with finding another suitable location for the training, White House and Pentagon officials said. Locations in and outside the United States will be considered, officials said.

The decision would in effect remove the administration from a standoff with local residents that has become increasingly violent and fractious, and that Republican strategists feared was alienating Hispanic voters, a group that is being ardently courted by both parties.

The Navy contends that no other area would allow the same combination of air, sea and land exercises, and it has called the weapons range "the irreplaceable crown jewel of our training." Vieques activists reacted coolly to Bush's plan, calling the withdrawal too slow.

England met at the White House yesterday with Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, and with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. England's plan is to be announced as soon as today, officials said. New York Gov. George E. Pataki met Tuesday with Rove and recommended that the administration stop the bombing, a position that few Republicans have taken.

Senior military officers voiced concern yesterday that the White House was so worried about the potential political losses with Hispanic voters that it was willing to sacrifice the military benefits of training on Vieques. Suspicion about Bush's intentions began to mount more than a month ago when the White House blocked the Navy from taking steps intended to increase chances that the residents would vote in a November referendum to continue the training, the officers said.

Under the plan, the military will announce that it intends to end all training on the island by May 2003. Under an agreement between former president Bill Clinton and former Puerto Rico governor Pedro Rossello, that is the date that the military would have had to leave Vieques if it lost the November vote.

A non-binding referendum will also be held by Puerto Rico on July 29.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is to appoint a panel of retired military officers and civilians to recommend an alternate site.

A Pentagon official said the Navy would be unlikely to retain any facilities on Vieques, which is home to 9,300 residents, if training ended.

If the Navy continues to insist that Vieques is irreplacable, a political battle may develop with pro-defense legislators opposing the administration.

Ten thousand Navy personnel aboard destroyers, frigates, submarines and ammunition ships took to the high seas yesterday 75 miles south of the island to begin a series of exercises. Navy officials also notified residents that they will begin air and ground maneuvers on the island Monday that will involve about 60 planes dropping inert, or dummy, bombs on targets at Navy installations.

Puerto Rico Gov. Sila Calderon, who arrived on the island yesterday for a prayer ceremony with bombing opponents, said she would not comment immediately on the Bush plan because she had not been officially told.

Protesters said they would continue to try to obstruct Monday's ground training because they do not want to wait two more years for the Navy to leave. At the house rented by the Committee for the Rescue & Development of Vieques across the street from Camp Garcia, protest leaders said they were not satisfied by Bush's decision.