Sen. Hillary Clinton arrives in Puerto Rico in support of Vieques protesters

By EILEEN McNAMARA The Associated Press 7/14/01 1:42 PM

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Puerto Rico on Saturday to visit environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy and a New York labor leader jailed for protests against Navy bombing on Vieques island.

Clinton has said her one-day visit is a "gesture of solidarity" with protesters. Kennedy, nephew of former President Kennedy, and labor leader Dennis Rivera are serving 30-day sentences for trespassing connected to an April 28 protest.

Her visit comes as the Navy has notified local government it will begin a new round of exercises on Vieques Aug. 1.

Acting Gov. Ferdinand Mercado, who made the announcement Friday, said the timing is "insensitive and lacking prudence" because it would follow a July 29 nonbinding referendum the local government is holding to gauge if and when Vieques' 9,100 residents want the Navy to leave. One option will be an immediate end to bombing.

Clinton, a Democrat who supports an immediate halt to the exercises, arrived in the capital, San Juan, Saturday morning. She did not speak to media at the airport before leaving in a motorcade for the federal detention center in suburban Guaynabo.

Clinton also planned to meet with Archbishop San Juan Roberto Gonzalez Nieves after leaving the prison on Saturday afternoon.

The former first lady will not travel to Vieques -- an outlying Puerto Rican island.

President Bush plans to have the Navy out of Vieques by 2003. But that promise has not appeased many Puerto Ricans, who claim six decades of bombing has harmed the health of islanders. The Navy denies those claims.

Many New York politicians have traveled to Puerto Rico to lend support to the Vieques cause -- some say to win votes among New York's estimated 1 million Puerto Ricans.

On Friday, New York legislator Adam Clayton Powell IV was released after being sentenced to time served in a San Juan federal court. He was arrested June 28 for trespassing on Navy land.

In April, Clinton met with New York civil rights leader Al Sharpton at a Brooklyn detention center. Sharpton is still serving a 90-day sentence for trespassing.

-- Anonymous, July 14, 2001