WASHINGTON — Puerto Ricans and their supporters Tuesday launched a new push for an "immediate and permanent end" to Navy bombing practice on the island of Vieques.

 Asserting military training has destroyed people's health, the economy and the island's environment, representatives in Congress began circulating a letter urging President Bush to halt the practice.

 Meanwhile, Puerto Rico Gov. Sila Calderon met senators on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon and other officials in her quest to evict the Navy from the range it has used for some 60 years.

 "This is not a national security issue, it's a health and human rights issue," said Anibal Acevedo-Vila, Puerto Rico's Democratic delegate to the House of Representatives.

 "What you are seeing on the island of Vieques is abuse," Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., said in a news conference before about 60 people from Vieques, Chicago and Pennsylvania who are lobbying lawmakers this week.

 The representatives signed a letter to Bush suggesting toxins from the ammunition used by the Navy are responsible for a mortality rate among island residents that is 40 percent higher, a cancer rate 27 percent higher and diabetes rate 70 percent higher than Puerto Rico as a whole.

 "The undersigned urge you to order an immediate and permanent end of the bombing in Vieques," said the letter, asserting that the majority of Puerto Ricans favor the idea.

 The Navy calls Vieques the "crown jewel" of its Atlantic training sites. Officials say exercises there are vital to national defense since they uniquely combine air, sea and land maneuvers.

 Because of the bombing, residents "live in fear ... their children's security has been jeopardized" and they are "prisoners in their own homes," said Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., who also signed the letter with Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, D-Ill.

 The Navy owns two-thirds of Vieques, and its bombing range covers 900 acres on the eastern tip — less than 3 percent of the island. It used live bombs until two went astray in a 1999 practice and killed a civilian guard on the bombing range.

 The bombing was halted and protesters occupied the range for more than a year before the Navy swept through and kicked them off in May.

 Under an agreement between then-President Clinton and then-Gov. Pedro Rossello, training with inert bombs instead of live ones resumed and Vieques' 9,400 resident will decide in a November referendum whether the Navy should stay or leave.

 The agreement, which Calderon opposes, says that if islanders vote to expel the Navy, it would have to leave by May 2003.

 If they vote to let the Navy resume full-scale training with live ammunition, the administration will ask Congress to provide an extra $50 million in aid to Vieques for housing and infrastructure improvements — on top of $40 million paid when the training with inert bombs resumed.

February 28, 2001