DATE: Monday, June 9, 1997                  TAG: 9706090067

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A3   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES 

DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   50 lines

SHALIKASHVILI MAY BE ASKED FOR 1 MORE TERM WITH JOINT CHIEFS

Defense Department officials raised the possibility Sunday that Gen. John Shalikashvili, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, might put off his retirement and remain in the post for another two-year term after the Air Force officer who seemed in line to succeed him acknowledged that he had committed adultery.

Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston returned home to Washington Sunday from an official trip to Central Asia, a day earlier than planned, and had no immediate comment on his intentions. But Defense Department officials said Ralston was expected to withdraw his name from consideration for the Joint Chiefs post as early as today, when he is to meet with Defense Secretary William Cohen at the Pentagon.

While Pentagon officials insisted Sunday that Ralston was not being pressured to withdraw, they said his candidacy had become a casualty of a national furor over the military's standards of conduct and its punishment of adultery, which is a crime under military law.

Although Shalikashvili has repeatedly spoken about how much he looked forward to his retirement in September, Pentagon officials suggested that he might be persuaded to stay on.

Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs traditionally serve two terms, but Pentagon officials said that under these circumstances, tradition might be a secondary concern.

``Shali would be a good, safe choice, and we wouldn't have to ask him the embarrassing questions that we're now going to have to ask all the other candidates,'' said a Pentagon official. ``I understand, however, that he'd be very reluctant. It's a killer job, and he really has his heart set on retiring.''

Officials said Cohen, who was widely criticized last week for standing by Ralston's candidacy for the Joint Chiefs post despite the adultery admission, was considering several candidates for the job.

Among them, they said, are two Army generals: George Joulwan, who announced his retirement earlier this year after serving as the Allied commander in Europe since 1993, and Wesley Clark, who had been named to succeed Joulwan.

Officials said it appeared that none of the other members of the Joint Chiefs - the leaders of the four branches of the armed services - was now a leading candidate to succeed Shalikashvili, who is 60.

The furor over the military's handling of adultery began in earnest earlier this year with the prosecution of 1st Lt. Kelly Flinn, the first female pilot of a B-52 bomber, who was forced out of the Air Force after admitting that she had disobeyed orders and lied to her commander over an affair with a married civilian man.

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