SOUTHCOM GENERAL WILL JOIN ANTI-DRUG OPERATION

Huber To Oversee Colombia Aid

Underscoring the importance that Washington attaches to Plan Colombia,
the Pentagon plans to dispatch a one-star army general to Bogota to
oversee implementation of portions of the $1.3 billion anti-drug
package, The Herald has learned.

News of the plan comes on the eve of President Clinton's one-day trip
to Cartagena today to further illustrate U.S. support for Colombia's
$7.5 billion military and civilian campaign against the drug
trafficking that has been corrupting the country for years.

Washington's share is $1.3 billion in helicopters, training and other
services, approved by Congress last month.

Brig. Gen. Keith M. Huber, director of operations at the U.S. Southern
Command in Miami, has been tapped to go to Colombia, probably next
month, to oversee the military portion of the money.

Still undecided: Huber's title, although he will not replace either the
military group commander or the military attache, both colonels,
military sources said.

In Miami, Southcom spokesman Raul Duany would not provide specifics.
``We have no official decision on this temporary appointment,'' he
said.

Plan Colombia is the Pentagon's most ambitious foray into the Americas
in more than a decade, and Huber, whose official biography reads like a
25-year prep course for directing a counter-insurgency strategy, will
be the only U.S. general in South or Central America.

Line To Miami

Also yet to be decided by Southcom is how big Huber's staff will be in
Bogota -- and whether he will work from the U.S. Embassy, where
Ambassador Anne W. Patterson will direct and monitor distribution of
the Colombia portions of the $1.3 billion in aid approved by Congress
last month.

But Huber, 47, will not work for Patterson, a career Foreign Service
officer who just moved over from the embassy in El Salvador. She
replaced fellow career diplomat Curtis W. Kamman.

Instead, a military source said, the 25-year career Army officer with a
background in Special Forces will coordinate with Patterson -- but
answer directly to the commander in chief of Southcom, the Pentagon's
Miami-based command-and-control headquarters for most military
operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The appointment was made by Marine Gen. Charles Wilhelm, an architect
of the military-civilian plan to support Colombia's war against drug
insurgents. But Wilhelm retires early next month, before Huber takes up
the post as a ``TDY'' slot, meaning open-ended temporary duty.

Southcom has only three generals in its so-called Area of
Responsibility -- all in Puerto Rico. A rear admiral, with two stars,
runs the Navy South at Roosevelt Roads, a two-star is commander of the
U.S. Army South at Fort Buchanan, near San Juan, and a one-star army
brigadier is in charge of Southcom's Special Operations command at
Roosevelt Roads.

Field Experience

Huber, a 1975 West Point graduate who has a bronze star, served as a
brigade field advisor in 1987 in El Salvador, the United States' most
high-profile counterinsurgency effort of the past 20 years.

In 1990-91, he was operations director, or a G-3, with the most
important U.S. Army division, the 101st Airborne, in Desert Shield and
Desert Storm. For 10 months in 1993 and 1994, he was the 101st's G-5,
in charge of the organization that works to win the hearts and minds of
a foreign population.

At Southcom, Huber has been Wilhelm's operations director, or J-3,
since July, and for 20 months before that was Wilhelm's executive
officer. He spent a year as commander of Joint Task Force -- Bravo at
the Soto Cano air base in Honduras, a staging point for military
operations in Central America.

Huber also was operations chief for the United Nations Mission in Haiti
in 1995.