Clinton Picks General to Command NATO

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - President Clinton has chosen U.S. Army Gen. Wesley
Clark to become commander of all allied NATO forces and American troops in
Europe, a senior Pentagon official said Monday.

Clark, 52, speaks Russian and was a member of the American team that helped
broker the 1995 Dayton peace accords on Bosnia. He is based in Panama as
chief of U.S. forces in Latin America and would replace retiring U.S. Army
Gen. George Joulwan as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Europe (SACEUR)
based in Mons, Belgium.

The Pentagon official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed a
Washington Post report that announcement of Clark's NATO nomination, which
would require approval by the Atlantic alliance, would come as early as
Monday.

"The president thinks very highly of him, but more importantly the secretary
of defense does," White House spokesman Mike McCurry also told reporters in
response to questions.

McCurry did not dispute the report on Clark, adding that the White House
"might even have some happy news on that front shortly."

The Pentagon official told Reuters earlier: "The job of SACEUR and of
commander of U.S. troops in Europe requires somebody to be both a soldier
and a statesman, to deal not only with military officials but the leaders of
governments and Russia."

"Clark fills the bill," said the official, adding that Defense Secretary
William Cohen had recommended the general to Clinton after interviewing more
than a dozen potential candidates.

The job of SACEUR has been held by U.S. military officers since the end of
the Second World War and Clark, a West Point military academy graduate and
former Rhodes scholar who attended England's Oxford University, is expected
to be approved by the allies, according to the Pentagon official.

Joulwan will retire this summer and Clinton's choice of Clark to succeed him
leaves the President with still another key military decision, that of
replacing U.S. Army Gen. John Shalikashvili as chairman of the Pentagon
Joint Chiefs of Staff when Shalikashvili retires in October.

A fast-rising star in the U.S. military, Clark was the senior military
member on the American team led by diplomat Richard Holbrooke that brokered
the Bosnia peace accords in Dayton, Ohio.

That agreement stopped the fighting in Bosnia and set terms for the NATO-led
peacekeeping force of some 31,000 which is now there. That force includes
some 8,000 American troops.

"He clearly knows the Bosnia situation and will be well- placed to emphasize
the importance of getting the country back on a firm economic and political
track by mid-1998 before the troops are scheduled to pull out," said the
Pentagon official.

"The next couple of years will also be key to dealing with the mechanics of
rebuilding Europe and working on the NATO's military structure," the
official told Reuters.

Clark would be the third chief of the U.S. military's Southern Command in
Panama to move to the Mons job. Both Joulwan and retired Army Gen. John
Galvin, served in Panama.

Clark, who will also command some 100,000 American troops in Europe and
oversee U.S. military operations in Europe and North Africa, already wears
the four-star rank of full general. He previously headed the U.S. Army's
National Training Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and has also been
director of strategy on the Pentagon's military Joint Staff.

Clark also once served as a senior military assistant to former NATO SACEUR
Gen. Alexander Haig in Mons.

NATO is currently embroiled in a rift between the United States and France
over the command of allied forces in Southern Europe based in Naples.
Washington has refused to bow to demands by Paris that the United States
turn over that post, which has always been held by a U.S. officer, to a
European.

The two countries have been involved in intense negotiations over the job,
which the United States says should be held by an American because the
preponderance of allied forces in the southern region -- including the
powerful U.S. Sixth Fleet -- are American.