THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 16, 1994 TAG: 9412160568
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
Two months after the expense of several humanitarian missions forced it to cut spending on troop readiness, the Pentagon has come up with $27 million to upgrade Cuban and Haitian refugee camps at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station.
Military spokesmen said Thursday that Navy Seabees at the base in southeast Cuba are improving water and sewer service and putting up almost 2,000 ``strongback'' tents, with wooden floors and screen walls. The tents offer better protection than conventional tents from the weather and insects.
Since coming to Guantanamo in the summer and fall, many of the 26,000 refugees have been living in tents staked into the runway and tarmac of the base's former airport. Others have been camped on the ground on a dusty former rifle range, various training areas, even a golf course.
``There are still some pretty tough living conditions,'' said U.S. Army Maj. Rick Thomas, a spokesman for the military task force managing the camps. ``It's not the type of place you or I would voluntarily bring our families.''
In addition to upgrading the tents, each of which will house about 10 migrants, the military has built two new kitchens, erected a large recreation tent - complete with bowling alleys - and put up basketball goals.
The refugees also have been provided with more than 1,000 radios, a daily newspaper and limited mail service. There's some live entertainment - the U.S. Army Field Band performed eight concerts in the camps this week - and refugee children are going to schools established by the migrants with American help.
Some adults are going to vocational courses as well, Thomas said.
Thomas said authorities may permit Cuban-Americans with relatives among the refugees to fly in for visits during the Christmas holidays. The government would not bear the expense of those trips, he said.
The military is flying hundreds of American servicemen stationed at the base to the United States for holiday leaves with families and friends.
Seven Naval Reserve flights on Wednesday and Thursday took about 400 troops to bases around the country, where they could connect with civilian airlines, trains and buses. Military dependents were forced to leave Guantanamo in September as the growing refugee population taxed the base infrastructure and produced security concerns.
The Navy said ``Operation I'll be Home for Christmas'' is causing no extra expense for the Reserve. The crews and planes - C-9 transports similar to civilian airliners - would have been in the air on training flights anyway and have simply been redirected to Guantanamo.
``It's good training for the crews, and it serves our troops down at Gitmo,'' said Chief Warrant Officer Tom Jones, a Navy Reserve spokesman.
From June through September, the Navy and Coast Guard intercepted more than 40,000 Cuban and Haitian migrants in the Caribbean.
Most of the Haitians have returned home since President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was restored to power in October. But negotiations to repatriate the Cubans or let them come to the United States are dragging. Some Cubans have tried to swim along the shoreline back to territory controlled by their government; others regularly demonstrate to protest their confinement at the base.
The Clinton administration has announced plans to seek more than $2 billion in emergency funds from Congress to cover the cost of refugee operations in the Caribbean, humanitarian relief in Rwanda and the restoration of Aristide to power.
When those operations drained other Pentagon accounts in the fall, Republicans complained that the nation was headed toward the ``hollow force'' of the 1970s, a time when, military analysts believe, spending cuts left the services underequipped and inadequately trained. by CNB