FORMER SOUTHCOM CHIEF ON TOUR IN CUBA

Retired General Expected To Speak With Military

Just months ago, Marine Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm ran Pentagon operations for
Latin America as chief of the Southern Command and was prohibited from
contact with the Cuban military.

Tuesday, citizen Wilhelm, 58, was in Havana on a fact-finding tour
sponsored by the Washington, D.C., Center for Defense Information, a
private, not-for-profit think-tank that specializes in security issues.

"They're going down to talk to Cuban military. This is similar to trips
that we have made before, albeit without someone of Gen. Wilhelm's
stature," said retired Army Col. Dan Smith, a Vietnam veteran and director
of research at the center.

Wilhelm is the second top U.S. military officer who once had responsibility
for Cuba to visit the island after taking off his uniform. In 1998, retired
Marine Gen. Jack Sheehan, whose turf included Cuba as commander in chief of
the Atlantic Command, met with both Fidel and Raul Castro and caused a stir
by urging closer U.S.-Cuba relations.

Wilhelm, who took over Southcom after oversight of Cuba was transferred to
it, has made no similar public statements. He was not available for comment
Tuesday.

Smith said the center, whose staff includes a retired rear admiral and
other former senior U.S. officers, advocates military-to-military contacts
between the United States and Cuba. He had no specifics on the delegation's
itinerary.

"We're in favor of lifting the embargo and the restrictions that have been
placed on Cuba," Smith said. "Cuba is not a threat to the United States or
anybody else."

Cuban-U.S. military contact is rare. The captain in command of the U.S.
Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay periodically meets a Cuban general at the gate
between U.S. controlled territory and Cuba proper, but mostly on migration
and marine matters.

Wilhelm, a 37-year career Marine, retired to Virginia in September. He
recently said he still has interest in returning to South Florida.

Besides dismantling Southcom's headquarters in Panama and supervising its
move to Miami, Wilhelm functioned as a sort of U.S. envoy to Latin America
and the Caribbean, delivering both strategic and goodwill aid.

On a recent visit, for a University of Miami conference on U.S. aid to
Colombia, he said he was consulting with two Washington-area businesses,
work that recently took him to Colombia and a meeting with President Andres
Pastrana.

A Southcom spokesman said Tuesday that he did not know whether Wilhelm had
told Southcom about the trip. He did, however, notify the State Department,
got briefed and was expected to meet diplomats at the U.S. Interests
Section in Havana during this week's trip.

"Retired Gen. Charles Wilhelm is a private American citizen on a private
trip to Cuba. Period," a State Department statement said Tuesday.

A department official said a retired two-star general was also on the trip,
which was licensed by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets
Control.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Panama Ambler Moss of the University of Miami's
North/South Center said he has long supported such exchanges. "I've always
thought that the Cuban military, quite possibly someday -- like Polish,
Hungarian and Czech counterparts who took off their Red Star and marched
into NATO -- are a pragmatic lot who may be thinking about their future,"
he said.

Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation,
countered that Wilhelm's sponsor was wrong in asserting that Cuba was no
threat.

"I don't have a problem with them meeting," he said of the retired
general's contact with Cuban military officials. "The problem is when they
come back and say they aren't a threat. We know they are an espionage
threat. We know that they are a drug threat. We know they are a terrorist
threat. And we know they're an immigration threat."

He cited the espionage trial of the so-called Cuban Wasp Network in Miami
federal court, where evidence suggests the alleged spies' Havana handlers
ordered them to penetrate Southcom during Wilhelm's tenure.

Senior U.S. military officials have privately expressed frustration with
the ban on contacts with the Cuban military, saying soldiers on opposing
sides should attempt to keep lines of communication open.

An earlier Southcom commander, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who later
became President Clinton's so-called drug czar, has also advocated closer
cooperation between the U.S. and Cuban officers on drug interdiction. "Cuba
will not remain a collapsing Communist dictatorship with a goofy economic
system much longer," he said in May 1999. "Eventually it is going to be
another economic center in the hemisphere, so we clearly don't want
international drug crime dominating Cuba."