DATE: Monday, March 31, 1997                TAG: 9703310111

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   65 lines

CLINTON PICKS ARMY GENERAL AS TOP NATO MILITARY COMMANDER WESLEY CLARK HAS BEEN ON THE FAST TRACK THROUGHOUT HIS ARMY CAREER.

President Clinton has picked Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark to become the next top NATO military commander and head of U.S. forces in Europe, senior defense officials said Sunday.

The selection is arguably the second-most significant military appointment Clinton will have to make this year, after naming a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because of the controversial issues confronting the United States and its European allies, such as NATO expansion, relations with Russia and operations in Bosnia.

``We wanted someone who's both a soldier and a statesman, someone with diplomatic and policy experience,'' a senior Pentagon official said, adding that formal announcement of the selection is expected today.

Clark, 52, brings to the job both a knowledge of Russian and extensive experience with the Bosnia problem. He was the senior military member on the team, led by diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke, that brokered the 1995 Dayton peace accords. The accords stopped the fighting in Bosnia and set terms for the NATO-led peacekeeping force, whose recently extended mission is scheduled to end next year.

Now head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in Central and South America, Clark will be following in the footsteps of two other Army generals who went from there to the post of supreme allied commander in Europe: John R. Galvin, who led NATO from 1985 to 1987, and George Joulwan, the current NATO chief who is due to retire this summer.

A West Point graduate and former Rhodes scholar, Clark has been on a fast track throughout his Army career. After a combat command in Vietnam where he won Silver and Bronze stars, he went on to an instructor's job in West Point's social sciences department; a stint on the Army chief's staff helping to prepare plans for the all-volunteer military; Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he was first in his class; and a White House fellowship.

His honors also include early promotion to major, a tour as operations officer of a brigade in Germany, a year and a half as assistant executive officer to Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr. - then NATO chief - and early promotion to lieutenant colonel, becoming the first in his West Point class to command a battalion.

Then, in 1981, a Washington Post Magazine piece that profiled the intense, soft-spoken Clark as the ideal modern Army officer threatened to set him up for a fall by overexposure. But he continued to receive choice assignments, serving in senior jobs at the National Training Center, Fort Leavenworth and the Training and Doctrine Command, commanding the 1st Cavalry Division, then becoming director of strategy on the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen recommended Clark for the NATO job after interviewing 11 four-star officers and two three-star officers, a defense official said.

It was the most senior military personnel choice that Cohen has had an opportunity to make since becoming secretary in January. According to the official, Cohen used the interview process to begin thinking as well about a replacement for Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John Shalikashvili, who steps down in October.

Like Clinton, Clark grew up in Arkansas and attended England's Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, facts that have led to a widespread impression that the two have a longstanding association. In fact, they did not know each other as students in Arkansas and their time at Oxford did not overlap.

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