THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9408050596
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Relief efforts in Rwanda and the naval blockade of Haiti are siphoning off millions of dollars the Pentagon needs to maintain ships, tanks and other equipment and to train soldiers and sailors, Defense Secretary William Perry warned Thursday.
Perry asked a House subcommittee to back a $270 million emergency appropriation for operations in Rwanda through the end of September. He also wants authority to juggle more than $2 billion earmarked for other Pentagon accounts.
Much of the money is needed to pay for humanitarian and other nonmilitary operations, including the use of troops to battle forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.
Without quick actions on those requests, commanders in the field will have to delay or cancel some activities because of the cash crunch, Perry said. For example, the Navy's Atlantic Fleet, based in Norfolk, will have to limit work at its maintenance depots to that required for safety reasons, he said.
Operations off Haiti alone are costing the Navy $20 million per month, Adm. Henry H. Mauz, the Atlantic Fleet's commander, said in a separate interview Thursday.
``We have ships and aircraft returning from deployment and we are parking them,'' Mauz said. ``We are not operating them until Oct. 1 (the beginning of the new fiscal year) in order to save money for the forces that must operate.''
Mauz said that as the Navy shrinks, the ships it deploys must stay underway longer. In its most recent deployment, the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt was underway for all but 18 days of its six months out of Norfolk, he said.
``Over the long term, that is not good for people or machines,'' Mauz said. ``When the ship comes back it is tired. We've got to put more money into maintenance.''
Appearing before the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, Perry heard similar complaints from lawmakers who recently returned from visits to ships enforcing the Haiti embargo.
``The troops are worn out,'' said subcommittee chairman John P. Murtha, D-Pa., recounting meetings with Marines who were dispatched to the waters off Haiti less than two weeks after returning to Norfolk from a six-month deployment in the Mediterranean.
Other subcommittee members gave the defense chief a fresh perspective on congressional skepticism about a possible invasion of Haiti and the growing concern among legislators about the military's involvement in what Pentagon planners call ``operations other than war.''
Rep. Joseph M. McDade of Pennsylvania, the subcommittee's ranking Republican, said peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, Haiti and elsewhere will cost the U.S. government roughly the same as it plans to spend in Korea, where North Korea's Communist government is thought to be developing nuclear weapons.
McDade said he is ``deeply concerned'' over those figures, suggesting that the Korean threat should claim more defense spending than goes to humanitarian efforts.
But Perry, who has called the Korean situation the most dangerous current threat to peace, defended the administration's priorities.
Other subcommittee members, including several Democrats, pointedly urged Perry to lobby President Clinton to seek congressional approval before undertaking any invasion of Haiti.
``If there's any way to do it, you're in a much better position if Congress and the President agree on the action,'' Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., told Perry.
Perry was noncommittal on the administration's plans, other than to repeat Clinton's pledge to ``consult'' with Congress before acting. But he suggested that the embargo and economic sanctions need more time to work against Haiti's military dictatorship.
The naval blockade has cut off the flow of oil to Haiti by sea, Perry said. ``But the back door'' - smuggling over Haiti's land border with the Dominican Republic - ``is wide open.'' He suggested recent moves by the Dominican government to cooperate in the embargo ``will get that back door reasonably well closed.'' by CNB