Retired general expected to speak with military

 BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 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 Raúl 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 Andrés 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.''