Gen. Powell Seeks 1 Command for Action in Regional Crises

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wants to combine under one command the training and dispatch of forces from different services for intervention in regional crises, Pentagon sources said Wednesday.

Gen. Colin L. Powell is recommending in a report required by Congress that such forces be consolidated under the U.S. Atlantic Command in Norfolk, Va., which would not necessarily be headed by an admiral as it is now.

The new combined command envisioned in the report would also take charge of any U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping missions and oversee disaster relief efforts, said the sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

But the draft document, now in the hands of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and U.S. military commanders around the world for their views, lacks the sweeping revisions endorsed by President-Bill elect Clinton and key Democrats in Congress, the sources said.

The report “contains recommendations on the redistribution of certain types of military assets,” one source said, but no major realignment of the military branches.

Another official said the report “is consistent” with Powell’s past calls for some readjustments. “I didn’t find a lot of sweeping changes here,” the source said.

Cheney has only a few weeks to send the report on to Congress. But he has told reporters in recent days that he might let his successor deal with it.

Clinton’s nominee for defense secretary, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin, (D-Wis.) has called for far deeper cuts in defense spending than Cheney and Powell want, including reducing the size of the Army from 12 to nine divisions.

And Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has recommended consolidating the air units of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps under the Air Force.

The draft report rejects that suggestion, one source said.