CARTAGENA Colombia AP U.S. counternarcotics operations currently based in Panama will move to Puerto Rico and elsewhere when Washington completes its troop pullout from Panama next year a senior U.S. commander said Tuesday. ``In a certain sense you can look at Puerto Rico as a partial replacement for Panama'' said Marine Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm chief of the U.S. Southern Command with responsibility for Latin America during a meeting of regional defense ministers. Wilhelm was accompanying U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen who said the United States had ``not made much progress to date'' in deciding which other Latin American and Caribbean countries would share in hosting the relocated counter-narcotics forces. Negotiations to maintain a U.S. troop presence for anti-narcotics purposes in Panama were scuttled in September setting U.S. officials on a search for alternatives. All U.S. troops must leave the country by Dec. 31 1999 when the Panama canal reverts to Panamanian control. Panama was considered the ideal base for drug interdiction due to its central location along shipment routes between Andean cocaine- and heroin-producing countries and the United States. Currently U.S. AWACs radar planes track drug flights through the region from Howard Air Force Base in Panama. The facility will be closed in May. Wilhem didn't say which other countries might accept a U.S. presence saying only that they were in the southern Caribbean Central America and ``the Andean ridge'' which includes Colombia Bolivia Ecuador and Peru. APW19981201.1493.txt.body.html APW19981201.0053.txt.body.html