Navy resumes bomb drills on Vieques amid protests

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (CNN) -- The U.S. Navy resumed its bombing drills on Puerto Rico's Vieques island Monday afternoon despite some protests from residents who want the training to end immediately.

Seventeen people were detained Monday for trespassing onto Camp Garcia, the site of the bombing range, according to Bob Nelson, a spokesman for the Navy -- eight in the morning and nine in the afternoon.

"They cut a hole through the fence and came through the fence," Nelson said, adding they would be turned over to the U.S. marshals to face formal trespassing charges.

The trespassers never got close to the actual range, Nelson said, noting the range is 11 miles from the fence.

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The Navy now uses only inert ordnance on the island. The exercises began shortly after 2 p.m. and were scheduled to continue into the night, Pentagon sources said.

The exercises are set to continue through the end of the month, said Lt. Cmdr. Awilda Pereira, a spokeswoman with Naval Station Roosevelt Roads on Puerto Rico. The bombing range on Vieques will be used "at least this week," Nelson said.

The scene outside Camp Garcia was calm, with only a small number of protesters compared with previous demonstrations, when hundreds of demonstrators gathered daily to protest the military exercises that have taken place on the bombing range since World War II.

The current exercises will involve F-14s, F-18s and EA-6B Prowlers from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.

The range where the bombing exercises are taking place makes up just 3 percent of this island of 33,000 acres. The training is just a small part of 19 days of exercises for the Roosevelt battle group, which is composed of 11 vessels and about 10,000 sailors.

Monday's bombing runs are the first since the Bush administration announced last week the exercises would end on Vieques in May 2003.

Demonstrators say the island's residents are at higher risk of cancer and are exposed to dangerous levels of noise. The Navy has responded that the critics' claims are unproven.

"They need a place where live ordnance can be delivered, and, of course, where it's convenient enough for the forces to be able to get there," retired Rear Adm. Eric McVadon told CNN.

On Sunday, the administration defended its decision.

"I think the secretary of the Navy has come up with a pretty good solution, that is to say, we use Vieques for another two years or so, and during that two-year period, we'll come up with alternatives," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on ABC's This Week.

The U.S. military has conducted exercises on Vieques since 1941. Controversy over use of the island for bombing practice has grown since April 1999 when an errant bomb killed a civilian security guard. In late April, about 180 protesters were arrested at the main gates of the Navy facility on the island during the Navy's resumption of exercises.

The administration's announcement has been strongly criticized by conservative lawmakers in Congress, who dismissed it as a political decision, and by opponents of the bombing, who want it to end immediately.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, repeated his criticism that key lawmakers were not consulted about the decision.

"I thought that this was not handled the smoothest way possible, and I've said so," Lott told CNN. Asked about Bush's rationale that local residents "don't want us there," Lott said he was concerned that could establish a "dangerous precedent" for U.S. military training.

Lott and administration officials faulted the previous Clinton administration for agreeing to submit the issues to a referendum in Vieques.

President Clinton had agreed to stop live-fire exercises on the island if the people of Puerto Rico decided in a referendum that they wanted them to stop. In the referendum this November, the islanders were to decide whether to accept a package of economic incentives in return for allowing the Navy to continue using the range after May 2003.

Last week, Bush administration officials said the referendum was no longer needed in light of the latest announcement.