US Army General Tommy Franks to retire

WASHINGTON - General Tommy Franks, who ran the recent US-led war against Iraq and the bombing of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, plans to retire this year, but not immediately, US defence officials said on Thursday.

"He will retire, probably in a month or two," a senior defence official said.

"He is going to retire, but it is not imminent," another defence source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "It's going to be months, it's not days."

There had been speculation that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted Franks to become Army chief of staff to replace outgoing General Eric Shinseki, who leaves his post next month. But some sources had said that Franks was not interested.

The St. Petersburg Times, based in Florida where Central Command has its headquarters, earlier this week reported that Franks was expected to leave his position as head of Central Command this fall.

The article quoted his wife, Cathy, as saying her husband was finally fulfilling a promise to get out of the military that he had made at the start of their lives together more than 30 years ago. "I'm glad to know that he's a man of his word," she told the newspaper.

Franks is a witty, self-effacing Texan from President George W Bush's childhood town of Midland, with a penchant for avoiding the limelight.

He took to the podium infrequently to answer questions from the hundreds of reporters gathered in Qatar where US military command headquarters for the war against Iraq was based.

He kept his silence for more than 60 hours after the start of the war before finally talking to the media at the As Sayliyah Camp command headquarters on the outskirts of Qatar's capital, Doha.

"Tommy Franks is no Norman Schwarzkopf," Franks once told reporters with a sheepish grin when asked to compare himself to the swashbuckling general who commanded US forces in the 1991 Gulf War.

But Franks was admired by fellow officers and his troops for a devotion to planning detail as head of Central Command.

Critics said he let fugitive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden slip from a trap in Afghanistan last year when US forces heavily bombed the mountainous Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan.

Bin Laden, blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, still has not been found, and neither has deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein despite two air strikes that specifically targeted him and his two sons in the Baghdad area.

Franks has served around the world, including in the Gulf War and in the Demilitarised Zone on the tense Korean peninsula as commander of the 2nd Infantry Division in 1995-97.

He was investigated and cleared by the Pentagon's inspector general earlier this year of allegations that military personnel had done errands for his wife and that he had failed to fully reimburse the government for her travel on his aircraft.

Franks agreed to improve security awareness after the investigation said he had inadvertently allowed his wife to hear classified information while flying aboard his aircraft.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq