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But for five decades, the U.S. military has occupied more than two-thirds of the 22-mile island, bombing and shelling the western tip around 190 days a year. It's the only place where the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marines all conduct live-fire training exercises within close range of a significant civilian population.

In April, the Navy stopped all bombing after a pilot mistakenly dropped two 500-pound bombs on an observation tower, killing civilian security guard David Sanes. It is the only reported civilian death linked to the exercises in the history of the Navy's presence here, but it was enough for the vast majority of Puerto Ricans -- those for statehood and those for independence alike -- to unite in their efforts to push the Navy out.

Demands that the Navy leave have resonated all the way to Washington. The White House has appointed a Pentagon panel to evaluate the controversy and a decision is expected any day now. If the panel finds for the Navy, the Puerto Rican attorney general has threatened to sue the federal government.

As Democrats court the influential Hispanic vote this election cycle, Vieques is poised to become a cause célèbre.

"I can assure you that once we leave this place and take our case to the people of New York in great numbers, and Illinois and Texas and California and Florida, this issue will be a critical matter on the agenda for 2000," Jackson said during the press conference he held with Gov. Rosello.

Although Republicans in Washington generally support the Navy remaining on the island, the issue has attracted a whole host of strange bedfellows. Democratic Sen. Chuck Shumer and Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski, as well as Democratic Reps. Luis Gutierrez, Robert Menendez and Nydia Velasquez and GOP Reps. Don Young and Dan Burton, have all called for the Navy to leave.

Last week Murkowski, R-Alaska, introduced a bill that would give the Puerto Rican government control of the Navy-owned land used for bombing exercises on the island. "It's time to return this tiny island to its people," Murkowski said in a speech on the Senate floor.

But fellow Republican James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee's panel on military readiness, threatened to shut down a major Navy base in Puerto Rico unless political leaders back off and allow resumption of target practice on Vieques. The base, Roosevelt Roads, pumps $300 million a year into the local economy, and the loss would be a painful one for Puerto Rico.

The chairman of the Republican National Committee links Clinton's clemency offer to threats of violence over the Vieques issue, noting that a self-proclaimed leader of the Puerto Rican group Boricua Popular Army came out of hiding recently to threaten that if the U.S. Navy resumes exercises in Vieques, it will "face the consequences."

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