Majority in Vieques vote U.S. Navy out

VIEQUES ISLAND, Puerto Rico (CNN) -- By an overwhelming margin, Vieques residents voted Sunday for the United States Navy to immediately stop bombing exercises there and leave, according to returns from a non-binding referendum.

Juan Fernandez, special commissioner for Vieques, said the official results found 68 percent of Vieques residents want an immediate halt to the exercises and disapprove of the Navy presence.

He said a total of 3,230 votes were cast by the island's 5,900 registered voters.

Less than two percent of voters -- 81 -- supported President Bush's plan to pull the Navy out of the island in May 2003 and allow drills with inert bombs to continue until then, Fernandez said.

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Last month, the Bush administration announced that the Navy would pull out of the island in May 2003. Sunday's referendum results could pressure the United States to withdraw earlier.

The Navy has trained in Vieques for nearly 60 years. Opponents say the bombings cause ecological damage to the island and health damage to the residents, but supporters dismiss those claims as unfounded and say the Navy's presence is good for the island's economy.

Some U.S. military and political leaders contend Vieques is critical to combat training.

"It is the only site where we can do amphibious landings, aerial bombings and firing from the sea simultaneously and that's what occurs in real-life, war-like situations," said former Rep. Tillie Fowler, a Florida Republican. "Once we lose it, we've lost the ability to train in that way."

The referendum was called by Gov. Sila Calderon, who favors an immediate end to the bombing.

The Navy has performed bombing exercises on Vieques for 60 years

"This [vote] is not an anti-Navy, anti-military, anti-American exercise," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Illinois. "This is an exercise of people saying we want our human rights protected, we want our human rights respected."

Sunday's nonbinding referendum will set the stage for a binding referendum in November. At that time, all Puerto Ricans will choose between allowing the Navy to continue using the range with live ammunition or a withdrawal by 2003, with blank ammunition exercises continuing until that time.

"The decision was largely made a year ago when Congress passed into law the referendum proposed by President [Bill] Clinton," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told CNN's Evans, Novak, Hunt and Shields.

"If we lose, we'd be out in the same time frame we announced, and frankly no political realist that I know says that we had a prayer of winning that referendum," he said.

Anti-military protests erupted in 1999 when a pair of errant 500-pound bombs killed a civilian security guard. Protesters invaded the site and camped there for a year until federal marshals removed them and the Navy resumed bombing, but with dummy bombs instead of live ammunition.

Protests have continued on the island. Civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are among those who have spent time in jail because of the protests.

Islanders blame their higher-than average cancer and infant mortality rate and other ills on the bombings. The Navy strongly denies harming the environment or islanders' health, and says local studies are unscientific and biased.

"The Navy has been a terrible neighbor," Gutierrez responded. "They spend billions of dollars bombing and destroying Vieques and contaminating that island."

But pushing the Navy out of the island could be "very economically damaging for Puerto Rico," Fowler said, noting that the United States has spent $14 billion in aid to Puerto Rico.