U.S. GENERAL SEES TURNING OF CORNER IN COLOMBIA

KEY WEST, Fla. (Reuters) - The general leading the United States' war
against the Latin American drugs trade said Thursday the situation was
looking better in frontline Colombia, where American personnel have
been helping the beleaguered military against traffickers' armies.

Marine General Charles Wilhelm, commander in chief of the U.S.
Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), said that with a new president and a
change in the armed forces leadership, there were signs Colombia was
``turning the corner.''

Earlier this year, as the Colombian army reeled from a string of
defeats by drug lords' armies allied with leftist guerrillas, Wilhelm
had expressed concern about its abilities.

The then president, Ernesto Samper, was persona non grata in the
United States because of his reputed links to drug lords.

Wilhelm met the new president, Andres Pastrana, armed forces chief
General Fernando Tapias, and other officials during a recent visit to
Colombia. Pastrana took office last month.

``I was very impressed by the new military leadership team and with
the national leadership team,'' Wilhelm told Reuters.

``I think we've seen some significant successes by the joint
(Colombian military) task force which has been executing Operation
Invincible...I think that organization symbolizes a turning of the
corner.''

``Recently we've seen not only the takedown of some fairly significant
laboratories but we've seen some small-scale but nevertheless
encouraging tactical successes against the insurgents and the
narcotraffickers. It's a good team.''

The fight against the illegal drugs trade is a main mission of the
Miami-based SOUTHCOM, the U.S. military's Latin American and Caribbean
command. Its help to Colombia, the main source of cocaine reaching the
United States, includes counter-narcotics training personnel and radar
technicians monitoring flight paths and smuggling routes.

Wilhelm was speaking in an interview at the Naval Air Station in Key
West, where he will host a meeting Friday of top officials involved in
the drugs fight from Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Panama, Colombia,
Venezuela and Ecuador. U.S. drugs czar Barry McCaffrey, himself a
former SOUTHCOM commander, will deliver the keynote address.

Wilhelm said co-operation between the countries of the region was
growing ever closer and it showed in the number of drug seizures.

``There are a lot of success stories...I think our activities,
particularly in the Caribbean with (operations) Frontier Shield and
Frontier Lance, have been very productive.''

But as anti-drugs forces clamp down in one area, the traffickers
switch to new routes. They had moved across the Caribbean from east to
west and were now increasingly using the east Pacific, the general
said.

``I'm concerned about the transit routes through the east Pacific.
Some of our intelligence analysis indicates fairly clearly that
there's an extensive flow of cocaine out of source zone ports through
the eastern Pacific, the Sea of Cortez and into Mexican ports'' from
where it is smuggled over the U.S. southwest border.

``We have designed an operation that targets that particular sector.
The plan is complete,'' said the general, a crop-haired, personable
veteran of conflicts from Vietnam to Somalia.

Wilhelm declined to discuss the fate of a planned multinational
anti-drugs base in Panama. The original plan envisaged turning the
U.S. Howard Air Force base in the canal zone into the regional center,
with a U.S. troop presence of 2,000 plus soldiers from other countries.

But Washington said in July that talks were at an impasse, locked over
the time issue in an agreement allowing U.S troops to stay in Panama
beyond the end of 1999, the date set in a 1977 treaty for Panama to
regain full control of the canal.

One alternative that has been mooted is to move and merge the present
U.S. anti-narcotics base in Panama, the Joint Interagency Task Force
South, which oversees South America, with its counterpart the Joint
Interagency Task Force in Key West, which covers the Caribbean and the
Gulf of Mexico.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry