BY JAMES ANDERSON Associated Press

 VIEQUES, Puerto Rico -- Lightning flashes overhead and a hard rain falls as salsa
 singer Willie Colon joins protesters camping amid the craters on the U.S. Navy's
 beachfront bombing range.

 The surreal stream of celebrities, politicians, clerics, athletes and fishermen who
 occupy the bomb-pocked campsites underscores the political quagmire facing
 President Clinton: Should he evict the protesters -- as the military demands -- and
 risk widespread civil disobedience in Puerto Rico?

 On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee will hear from Navy
 Secretary Richard Danzig, who wants bombing practice to resume, and Puerto
 Rico Gov. Pedro Rossello, who adamantly opposes it.

 Like few other issues before it, the campaign to boot the Navy from the outlying
 island of Vieques has galvanized Puerto Rican nationalism and attracted
 politicians of all persuasions -- even those, like Rossello, who want to make this
 Spanish-speaking U.S. territory the 51st state of the union.

 GREAT PLATFORM

 And it has given Independence Party chief Ruben Berrios, the protest leader, a
 platform far greater than the 3 percent showing his cause received in last
 December's plebiscite on statehood.

 Defying repeated warnings from the Navy, protesters have occupied the range
 since David Sanes Rodriguez, a civilian security guard, was killed in a bombing
 accident April 19.

 For many, that was the last straw in an on-again, off-again campaign to get the
 Navy off Vieques, a 20-mile-long island inhabited by 9,300 civilians. Bombing was
 halted after the accident, and Clinton is awaiting a Pentagon report on possible
 alternatives before deciding the issue.

 The civilian occupation of the range ``is the ultimate expression of a people in a
 desperate state,'' Colon said. So desperate, some fear, that widespread civil
 disobedience -- even violence -- could ensue if Clinton doesn't hand over the Navy
 range to Puerto Rico.

 Protesters have erected five tent camps along the white beaches of the range,
 located 10 miles from the island's main town, Isabel II. It is littered with bombs
 and artillery shells, water-filled craters, rusted scrap, charred tree bark -- the
 detritus of live-fire military exercises since World War II.

 Skeleton crews run the camps during the week. The numbers swell into the
 hundreds on weekends, when families and friends come by boat, bringing food,
 drink and music.

 DOMINANT ISSUE

 The issue has dominated news media and street talk for months, and the chorus
 of indignation has drowned out those concerned about the consequences of
 rebellion for Puerto Rico, whose four million people have U.S. citizenship and get
 $11 billion annually in federal funds.

 The Navy insists Vieques is vital to national security as the only place where East
 Coast fleets can train in simultaneous air, land and sea operations. It has been
 used to prepare for every U.S. conflict since Vietnam.

 Losing Vieques could mean losing lives at war -- a risk not acceptable to the
 American public in this era of precision bombing, the Navy says. It also notes that
 Sanes Rodriguez's death was the first at the range in more than 50 years.

 The Navy acquired roughly two-thirds of Vieques in 1941 -- land for a munitions
 dump on the western end and land for the bombing range on the eastern half.
 Vieques' civilians are sandwiched in between.

 For years, they've complained about shaking windows and frightened
 schoolchildren, about high cancer rates and the use of napalm, about fisheries off
 limits to their fishing fleet. Recently the Navy admitted that it had mistakenly fired
 bullets tipped with depleted uranium in violation of federal laws and that it dropped
 napalm in 1993.

 Prospects for a compromise seem slim. Puerto Rico's leaders have criticized a
 leaked proposal to allow the Navy five years before a pullout. And the Navy, for its
 part, says it cannot find another Atlantic range.

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald