BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The governor of Puerto Rico Friday expressed his
 willingness to support the Pentagon's limited use of the island of Vieques if the
 Clinton administration abandons it as a bombing range and cedes the property to
 the commonwealth.

 Gov. Pedro Rossello, in an interview with The Herald, said the Department of
 Defense could continue to use a counter-drug spy radar and permit Marines to
 practice rifle-shooting assaults on the island. But he expressed confidence that
 the bombing will not resume.

 Rossello spoke to The Herald fresh from testifying on the Vieques controversy
 before the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington. The issue has
 united statehood advocates like the governor and independence supporters such
 as lawmaker Ruben Berrios, who has staged a six-month sit-in that stopped the
 bombing.

 The governor rushed home from Washington Wednesday to oversee emergency
 preparations for Hurricane Jose, which swept east and spared his commonwealth
 significant damage.

 BOMBING SLAMMED

 He said confidently, and repeatedly, that Navy and NATO aircraft had dropped
 their last bomb on six-decade-old ranges on the 20-mile-long island. Two-thirds of
 it is owned by the U.S. government; the rest is home to 9,300 civilians.

 ``At some point the Navy will leave Vieques,'' he said. ``The destructive bombing
 that has gone on for 58 years will not be resumed. If the Navy wants to drag this
 out further that's fine with us -- as long as there is no bombing of Vieques.''

 A presidential panel recommended the opposite this week -- advocating that
 training missions resume for five years while the military finds other test sites.
 President Clinton must now decide the fate of Vieques. He ordered the special
 study after a fighter jet mistakenly dropped a bomb on a watchtower April 19,
 killing civilian guard David Sanes, 35.

 Although confident that the bombing would not resume, he said he was not privy
 to what the president would decide -- or when he would announce it.

 ``There will be no bombing. You can have Marines landing and shooting with their
 rifles,'' he said, adding, ``that can be worked out.''

 `RETHINK TRAINING'

 Rossello said, however, that the Navy should rethink its training doctrine because
 no U.S. force had met opposition in an amphibious assault since troops led by
 Gen. Douglas MacArthur attacked Inchon, Korea. ``Maybe this is a stimulus for
 the Navy to look toward the future and not the past.''

 Vieques is also home to Over the Horizon Radar, expected to be operational early
 next year. Invented in the Cold War to track Soviet aircraft from Alaska, the
 Miami-based Southern Command established two stations in Puerto Rico, one on
 Vieques, to spy on drug activity across South America.

 Rossello described the radar system as ``indispensable'' to the drug war. It can
 and should stay on Vieques, he said, to underscore Puerto Rico's commitment to
 the U.S. war on drugs. ``Our actions speak eloquently . . . We have been
 proactively seeking a participation in the national defense.''

 At least one senator threatened this week to shut down the U.S. Navy Base at
 Roosevelt Roads, on mainland Puerto Rico facing Vieques, if the bombing ranges
 were closed.

 ECONOMIC BENEFITS

 Rossello was unable to say how many millions of dollars the base contributes to
 his island's economy.

 But, he said, a bombing-free Vieques, cleaned up by U.S. forces before they
 ceded it to Puerto Rico, ``could become an incredibly attractive tourism
 destination on a level that would compete worldwide.''

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald