pollution on its bases will give legal muscle to Bermuda's battle for compensation, Environment Minister Arthur Hodgson predicted yesterday.

Mr. Hodgson said he was shocked at Dr. Tom Iliffe's claim the US planned to blow up the cave to hide the evidence of their contamination.

"I'm surprised. I did not think the Americans would have behaved in that fashion,'' he said.

"This is a nation based on very sound moral principles, even if it doesn't always adhere to them.'' Dr. Iliffe, a marine biologist who once worked at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, revealed this week that he weighed into the US Navy when he found a cave at the old Naval Annex was being used as a dumping ground for tons of oil and raw sewage.

And Dr. Iliffe said he told the Americans it had to stop but was told that they would blow up Bassett's Cave, before leaving the Island, to bury the evidence.

Mr. Hodgson -- a lawyer and former Rhodes scholar -- agreed that Dr. Iliffe's evidence would put even more pressure on the US to come clean and stump up the estimated $65 million needed to remove American waste.

He said: "I should have thought so. It was definitely in violation of Bermuda law and American law. What they were doing was definitely illegal.'' The Royal Gazette revealed last month that the US pumped waste oil and raw sewage into Bassett's Cave for decades and left it behind when it closed their bases in 1995. The site is earmarked for a major tourist development.

The US also left tons of potentially deadly asbestos, poisonous heavy metals like lead and mercury and hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil at the former US Naval Air Station in St. George's.

US `will see the light' But the US has insisted it has no liability under the terms of the 1941 lease agreement.

And it said it will only pay for pollution clean-ups if the risk to health is "imminent'', which it maintains is not the case in Bermuda.

Mr. Hodgson said: "I really don't understand the American position and I believe that, given time, they will see the light. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.'' The scale of the Bassett's Cave pollution became evident when the UK Government, which has backed Bermuda's bid for clean-up cash, drafted in environmental experts from Britain to draw up a new report for the Americans.

Deputy Governor Tim Gurney later said hardened surveyors from Environmental Resources Management, who handled the removal of Royal Navy oil pollution at Dockyard, were stunned by the filth in Bassett's Cave.

Mr. Hodgson said the Americans, given their "special relationship'' with the UK, would be more likely to bow to pressure from that country and pay up.

"The whole US policy in Europe depends on Britain,'' he noted. "The US still has bases in Britain.

"If Britain puts its foot down, the Americans will be bound to respond. Their entire European policy depends on British cooperation.'' Dr. Iliffe said Navy chiefs in the mid-80s definitely appeared "more interested in covering up the problem than cleaning it up''.

He added that the large cave, once a tourist attraction, had probably been home to unique species killed off by the waste.

Mr. Hodgson said: "We certainly can't use it and we want to be able to.

"That cave was a part of what we visited and a part of our environment which we can't use now.'' MILITARY MIL