WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is sending extra U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf to strengthen security at ports used by Navy ships, Pentagon officials said.
The officials were reluctant to provide details, but they said dozens of Navy and Coast Guard security personnel were being sent with patrol boats. They would not say exactly how many or at which ports they would operate.
The move is part of a Pentagon effort to improve the protection of American ships and other military forces in the region in the aftermath of the Oct. 12 terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the suicide attack.
The Navy, meanwhile, said the heavily damaged Cole is due to arrive back in the United States next week.
The Cole has been in transit from the Middle East since early November aboard a Norwegian-owned heavy lift ship. It will be off-loaded at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., for repairs that are expected to take one year and cost roughly $240 million.
The day the Cole was attacked, U.S. Navy commanders in the Middle East ordered all ships out of port. They have not returned since. Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said Tuesday "there is a great desire" to ease the security restrictions "to have a more comfortable and relaxed standard of living, if you will, for our sailors and marines in that area, and yet the first priority has to be force protection."
To strengthen port security in the Gulf, Defense Secretary William Cohen authorized the deployment of extra Navy and Coast Guard security personnel, Quigley said.
Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations, told reporters that he could not comment on the ongoing Cole investigations.
A separate investigation, by an outside panel appointed by Cohen, is reviewing whether the U.S. military as a whole can take steps to improve the way it protects and supports U.S. forces abroad.
Clark said the Navy investigation's preliminary results are expected to be forwarded in the next few days from the U.S. Fifth Fleet commander in Bahrain, Vice Adm. Charles W. Moore Jr., to the commander of U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Va., Adm. Robert Natter. Because it ultimately will come to Clark for review, "it would be totally inappropriate" to comment on the specifics of the investigation, he said.
Clark said one of the toughest issues raised by the Cole attack is how the Navy can better improve the security of its ships in foreign ports without violating the sovereign interests of host nations.
To illustrate his point, the four-star admiral postulated a circumstance in which a foreign ship entered an American port and established its own security perimeter with armed guards that prohibited U.S. vessels from moving about.
"How long would we tolerate that?" he asked. "About four seconds. We can't go do that in other people's countries, either."
On the Net:
Navy site for Cole: www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/news/news_stories/cole.html
USS Cole site: www.spear.navy.mil/ships/ddg67/