THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 25, 1994 TAG: 9408250805
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN AND JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 136 lines
Struggling with a flood of Cuban refugees, the Clinton administration prepared Wednesday to evacuate more than 2,000 American civilians from the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba to safer U.S. quarters, possibly in Norfolk.
``We are already beginning a managed drawdown of some of the (military) dependents who are at Guantanamo,'' Defense Secretary William Perry announced at a White House press briefing.
Pentagon sources said only those civilians whose work is judged vital to base operations will be allowed to stay at Guantanamo. About 2,200 other people - military spouses and children, civilian workers and their families - will be evacuated.
Some 5,400 non-military personnel live and work on the base. More than 14,000 Haitian and 2,000 Cuban boat people have moved in since early July and are living in U.S-built tent cities scattered across the 45-square-mile enclave. Perry said Wednesday the camps are being expanded to accommodate up to 40,000 migrants.
``We have significant capacity beyond that and will expand beyond that if necessary,'' he promised.
The administration stanched a flow of Haitian migrants last month by announcing that they would be sent to Guantanamo rather than permitted to come to the United States. But a similar announcement last week regarding Cubans has not stopped thousands from taking to rafts and small boats and attempting to negotiate the 90-mile strait separating their island from Florida.
The Coast Guard picked up about 2,400 Cubans by 6 p.m. Wednesday and several thousand more were on Coast Guard or Navy ships bound for Guantanamo.
``Guantanamo Bay Naval Station is shifting from a training command to one in which we are trying to find shelter for the migrants,'' a senior military official said. ``There are increasing demands on the base which forces us to evacuate these people.''
The timing of the evacuation and the destination of the workers and families were unclear Wednesday night. Military sources suggested the Norfolk area is a likely haven for the families because of the concentration of Navy facilities in the area to support them. However, local officials said they could not comment on whether they would be taken to Norfolk.
``We want to give them the red carpet treatment, as best we can,'' said one Navy official. ``We recognize this represents a severe hardship for these families.''
As the Pentagon prepared to remove civilians from Guantanamo, it also moved to add to the 3,251 military personnel there. About 800 of the troops are military police assigned to keep order in the the Cuban and Haitian camps. One source said three additional companies, totaling about 750 troops, will be added to the security complement.
Perry and Attorney General Janet Reno met with reporters to deliver fresh pleas for Cubans to stay home and to stress again that those who set out for the U.S. will be dispatched to Guantanamo rather than allowed to immigrate.
Reno, who was a prosecutor in Miami before President Clinton made her the federal government's top lawyer, said Cuban-Americans in her former home ``should urge your family not to make such trips.''
To people in Cuba, she implored, ``Do not risk your lives; it is too dangerous . . . You are going to Guantanamo or to other safe havens and you will not be processed - not be processed - for admission to the United States.''
While Perry said the U.S. is prepared to keep refugees at Guantanamo indefinitely, several who have served at the base were skeptical about maintaining up to 40,000 migrants there for very long.
``I wish they'd have called me first,'' said Anthony P. Armbrister, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who was executive officer of the marine barracks at Guantanamo during 1988-90.
``As far as land, there's not that much where you can put all those people. And then to separate them from residents. . . and provide the kind of security that's needed is going to be horrendous.''
Haitians at the base this summer already have clashed twice with the Americans guarding them, in one instance causing injuries to about two dozen people. The Haitians are living on asphalt at McCalla Field, a former airport, while the Cubans are being housed at two sites, Camp Buckeley and Camp Hunt, several miles and ridge lines away.
``I don't want to imagine what it would be like'' to spend a Caribbean summer camped at the airstrip, Armbrister said. ``It gets godawfully hot down there.''
Most of the 45-square-mile enclave is rocky, cactus-covered hills, unsuitable even for tents. On a small, relatively flat section by the bay, the Americans have built homes, base offices, shopping and sanitation facilities and a desalination plant.
Because the United States has no relations with Cuba's communist government, the base must produce its own electricity, fresh water and other necessities.
As recently as mid-July, U.S. officials said the base could accommodate 12,500 refugees without overtaxing its water and sewer facilities. Since then, portable desalination facilities and dozens of additional portable toilets have been shipped in.
Dependents have complained this week that they were having to stand in line for groceries from the base commissary and that basic items such as milk and food were running low.
According to a Portsmouth man, whose daughter and two grandchildren are dependents at the base, water is being rationed and parents have been told that the base school probably will not open this term.
The last time dependents were ordered off the base was in February 1964 when the Cuban government cut off the water supply. On Oct. 22, 1962, President Kennedy ordered all dependents evacuated during the Cuban missile crisis.
Those family members were sent to Norfolk aboard ship.
More recently, in May 1982, the Navy staged a practice evacuation of dependents, sending 300 of them to Jacksonville, Fla., aboard aircraft in a test of processing centers there. They were replaced by 300 Marines. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS color photo
The Coast guard cutter Baranof transfers Cuban refugees to a Navy
destroyer off Key West, Fla., on Wednesday. The ship will take them
to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Color map
REFUGEE SAFE HAVENS
U.S. officials are seeking the help from several countries to
provide refuge for either Cuban or Haitian refugees. Nations which
have been mentioned as possible safe havens:
Turks & Caicos
Guatemala
Honduras
Nicaragua
Panama
El Salvador
Costa Rica
Antigua & Barbuda
Dominica
St. Lucia
Grenada
Suriname
For copy of map, see microfilm
KEYWORDS: CUBA U.S. GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL AIR STATION
by CNB