South Korea's Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates will meet here this week for talks on a variety of issues, including the sharing of costs to maintain U.S. forces here to strengthening the South Korea-U.S. alliance, Defense Ministry officials said Monday.
The meeting, the first of its kind since President Lee Myung-bak administration was inaugurated in February, will be held on Tuesday at the Defense Ministry building, they said.
On top of the agenda for the meeting is the reduction of U.S. forces stationed here, according to the officials.
U.S. President George W. Bush promised to halt the drawdown of U.S. troops in South Korea last month in a summit with President Lee Myung-bak, but Gen. Burwell B. Bell, the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), last week hinted Washington may pull out additional troops and equipment from South Korea if there is ever need to do so due to the U.S. war against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The issue of maintaining current troop levels and any potential for the deployment of any American combat capability from South Korea to an active combat zone is an issue that will beaddressed by our two nations' defense leaders during the coming months," the outgoing USFK commander said in a media roundtable Friday.
Bell's remarks were in line with Washington's longstanding demand for Seoul to agree to giving more strategic flexibility to U.S. forces in South Korea and allow them to be deployed to other conflict areas.
Seoul is cautious about granting such flexibility to U.S. troops here as it fears the move could turn the country into a forward base for the U.S. war on terrorism while unnecessarily provoking the North.
"The agreement (between the presidents) was to freeze the number of U.S. forces at the current level of 28,500 and it has nothing to do with strategic flexibility," said a ministry official, who asked not to be identified. The number of U.S. troops dwindled to the current level from some 38,000 three years ago under a U.S. scheme to reposition its forces throughout the world.
The two are also expected to check the progress of a multibillion-dollar project to relocate frontline U.S. troops hereto a city south of Seoul, according to ministry officials.
Another key issue for the meeting is the sharing of the costs to maintain the U.S. troops here, an issue that has become one of the single largest sources of quarrels between the two allies overthe years.
The ministry officials, however, said the issue will not likely receive serious thought as the countries will soon launch formal discussions between their diplomats to address the issue under an arrangement called the Special Measures Agreement.
$Source: Xinhua
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