The United States has offered to hand over major missions of the armistice supervised by the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) to South Korea along with the transition of wartime operational control, military sources said Monday.
In view of the sensitive nature of the issue, South Korea hopes to negotiate the scope of the missions by June next year, they said.
South Korea and the U.S. failed to set a firm date for the transfer of wartime control of South Korean troops during their annual defense talks in Washington in October. As a stopgap measure, they agreed on a flexible transition timeline between Oct. 15, 2009 and March 15, 2012. Despite the planned dismantlement of their combined forces command, South Korea and the U.S. had originally agreed to maintain the system of the U.S.-led UNC on the Korean Peninsula.
But the U.S. proposed to transfer most of the 20 missions to South Korea when the latter takes over wartime operational control over the next few years. One of the major missions on offer is the investigation of a shooting accident or incident inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas.
"The U.S. made the offer during a meeting of bilateral military talks last summer," a military source said, asking to remain anonymous. Another ranking official confirmed this, but the U.S. military said it is still in the middle of confirming it.
In a statement, the Defense Ministry said that Seoul and Washington are still consulting with each other over the issue, but they have yet to make any "concrete agreement."
"During the 38th Security Consultative Meeting on Oct. 20, South Korea and the U.S. recognized the importance of the UNC during discussions of security and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia," the ministry said.
During the 1950-53 Korean War, the U.S. and 15 other countries fought alongside South Korea under the U.N. flag against the invading North Korea and China.
The war ended with an armistice between the UNC, North Korea and its main ally China. South Korea is not a signatory to the treaty. The two Koreas are still technically in a state of war because of the absence of a peace treaty.
North Korea frequently demands the dismantlement of the UNC, saying it poses a challenge to the unification of the two Koreas and that the U.S. formed the organization without proper authorization from the U.N. over five decades ago.
South Korea hopes to replace the 1953 armistice treaty with a more permanent peace regime, but negotiations with the North have yet to materialize amid the North's prolonged boycott of international negotiations over its nuclear weapons program.
South Korea voluntarily put the operational control of its military under the American-led UNC shortly after the Korean War broke out in 1950. It regained peacetime control of its forces in 1994, but wartime operational control remains in the hands of the top U.S. commander here, who also heads the UNC.
Seoul and Washington will create separate command systems in place of the Combined Forces Command, as they are in favor of running two separate operational commands that they believe can better suit the needs of the two countries.
Currently, about 30,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean War. The U.S. plans to cut the number of its troops here to 25,000 by 2008.
The Seoul-Washington alliance, forged in blood during the Korean War, has faced fundamental changes in recent years, as South Korea demands a greater role in its military operations to reduce its 680,000-strong military's dependence on the U.S. military.
The U.S., for its part, has also begun transforming its fixed military bases in South Korea into more mobile, streamlined forces as part of its global troop realignment plan.
Seoul, Dec. 11 (Yonhap News)
U.S. proposes to transfer UNC armistice missions to S. Korea |
