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US plans to cut troops in S.Korea by third
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-07 16:38

The United States plans to cut its troops in South Korea by a third by the end of next year, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said Monday.

Although North Korea's 1.1-million-strong armed forces dwarf the U.S. contingent of 37,500 troops, any reduction is closely watched because its symbolic deterrent value outweighs its numerical strength. South Korea has 690,000 troops.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Lawless, (TOP) walks with his South Korean counterpart Kwon Ahn-doo to hold a meeting at the Defense Ministry in Seoul June 7, 2004. The United States and South Korea opened talks on Monday on a U.S. plan to reposition forces and withdraw up to a third of the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed near the cold war's last frontier.  [Reuters]

"U.S. officials told us last night that under their Global Defense Posture Review they are planning to reduce the number of U.S. troops here by 12,500 by the end of December 2005," Kim Sook, head of the ministry's North America bureau, told reporters.

Kim was briefing reporters after a first day of separate talks with U.S. officials on relocating U.S. troops away from front-line positions near the Demilitarised Zone border with North Korea.

That figure would include 3,600 U.S. soldiers already earmarked for deployment to Iraq from South Korea.

Asked whether South Korea had agreed to the pullout timescale, Kim said: "That is what the United States presented as their plan and were going to discuss it from now on."

Kim said the U.S. officials had said Washington would pursue the reduction very carefully because of the security conditions on the Korean peninsula.

He said the United States welcomed Seoul's plans for a more independent defense and would actively help South Korea with that.

Wi Sung-lac, a National Security Council adviser, told reporters South Korea had yet to find out what U.S. forces would be moved from where under the proposed reduction. There were no formal talks on this during the meetings on troops being relocated within South Korea.

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