WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- The US Defense Department has been moving on a variety of fronts to seek exemptions from environmental laws for the 28 million acres of land it controls for combat exercises and weapons testing, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

    In the Congress, the Pentagon has won exemptions in the last two years from parts of the Endangered Species Act and the MarinesMammal Protection Act, and has sought in recent years to exempt military activities, for three years, from compliance with parts of the Clean Air Act, the report said.

    The Pentagon, which controls about 140 of the 1,240 toxic Superfund sites around the country, is also seeking partial exemptions from two laws governing toxic waste. Two months ago, itdrafted revisions to a 1996 directive built on a pledge "to display environmental security leadership within Department of Defense activities worldwide."

    The draft revisions eliminate the reference to environmental security, and emphasize instead that it is the Pentagon's role to sustain the national defense mission.

    The Pentagon's enthusiasm for the environmental ethos has waxedand waned over the past 15 years, as it has grappled with its roleas one of the country's longest-standing industrial polluters and conservator of some of the nation's most ecologically sensitive land.

    Since 1985, the Pentagon has spent more than 25 million US dollars on a program to clean up active and closed military bases,but at the same time has continued to generate pollution, the report said.

    Pentagon officials were quoted as saying that they feared if they tried to redeploy fighter jets, they might find themselves required to adopt burdensome environmental controls. They also feared that a wave of lawsuits to block munitions testing could argue that live-fire training was a waste management activity subject to environmental controls. Enditem