Washington is considering withdrawing its troops from the Korean peninsula

PYONGYANG, March 7 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - North Korea stood Friday, March 7, by its demand for direct talks with Washington to solve the nuclear crisis, as the U.S. is reportedly considering pulling some or all of its 37,000 troops away from the South's border, and perhaps out of the Korean peninsula altogether.

At a question-and-answer session with Pentagon employees Thursday, U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said Washington's existing force deployments in Europe and Korea were a Cold War relic, reported British daily The Independent.

He added that the South Korean economy was "25 to 35 times" as large as that of the reclusive Communist north, meaning that Seoul had "all the capability in the world of providing the kind of upfront deterrent that's needed".

In their current position, close to the Demilitarized Zone separating the two states, the American force was "intrusive" for the South Koreans and "not very flexible" for use elsewhere, Rumsfeld said.

His words reflect the increasing controversy in the South over the presence of American troops. Some restaurants in Seoul have even warned off U.S. servicemen after allegations of crimes committed against Korean civilians.

The South has also been critical of the Bush administration's hard line towards the North, saying that it has undermined its own efforts to build ties with its neighbor and contributed to the present escalation of tensions.

U.S. President George W. Bush insisted only a multi-national effort could defuse the stand-off.

Bush Thursday reiterated that he wanted to resolve the crisis through diplomacy, and that he wanted multilateral talks involving China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

"Therefore, I think the best way to deal with this is in multilateral fashion by convincing those nations that they must stand up to their responsibility, along with the United States, to convince (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il that the development of a nuclear arsenal is not in his nation's interests," Bush said during a prime-time news conference.

In a commentary hours after Bush called on China and North Korea's Asian neighbors to play a greater role, North Korea accused the United States of seeking a military solution.

"As far as the U.S. much-publicized 'nuclear issue' on the Korean peninsula is concerned, it can surely be solved if the U.S. has a will to settle it through dialogues and negotiations with the DPRK (North Korea)," said the editorial carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

KCNA said Bush's refusal to rule out the military option to resolve the crisis showed he was planning to launch a pre-emptive strike on the Stalinist state.

"The DPRK wants peace but never begs for it. It neither wants war nor avoids it," KCNA said, warning that North Korea was ready to "counter an all-out war with an all-out war".

China and Russia, regional powers traditionally close to North Korea, favor a peaceful resolution through direct Pyongyang-Washington talks.

However, the U.S. leader expressed strong distrust of direct negotiations with Pyongyang.

"We've tried bilateral negotiations with North Korea. My predecessor, in a good-faith effort, entered into a framework agreement. The United States honored its side of the agreement; North Korea didn't," Bush said.

Bush says Pyongyang breached the 1994 nuclear safeguard agreement, reached during his predecessor Bill Clinton's presidency, by launching a secret uranium-enrichment program, which triggered the crisis when it was revealed by a US envoy to Pyongyang in October.

North Korea has restarted a nuclear reactor, which Washington says is only of used for military purposes.

A group of top former Clinton officials – led by Madeleine Albright, who as Secretary of State visited the North in 2000 – joined Senate Democrats in demanding immediate direct talks with Pyongyang.

The North's next and even more alarming step might be to switch on the reprocessing plant at the Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang, a possible prelude to the manufacture of several plutonium-based nuclear weapons by the summer. This would involve the transfer of 8,000 spent fuel rods now in a cooling pond to the plant.

Seoul Rejects Rearranging U.S. Troops

For its part, South Korea said Friday the United States wanted to rearrange the deployment of its 37,000 military personnel stationed on its soil but stressed there were no plans to reduce the number of ground troops.

Defense Minister Cho Young-Kil reaffirmed Seoul's stance that any changes to the U.S. military presence in South Korea should be delayed until North Korea's nuclear stand-off eases.

"The United States wants changes to its U.S. military presence, including mergers of bases, redeployment and the relocation of the Yongsan base (out of Seoul)," Cho told the National Assembly.

"But currently, there are no plans to cut the numbers of the US ground troops stationed in (South) Korea," he said.

Cho stressed that there had been no official talks between the two allies on the withdrawal or reduction of US troops based in South Korea.

He said the two countries would start sometime next month wide-ranging discussions to review the five decades-old alliance.
The talks will focus on the redeployment of the U.S. troops, a fixture of the U.S. military presence in northeast Asia since the end of the Korean war in 1950, and the relocation of the Yongsan base as well as military commanding rights.

U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Thomas Hubbard said Friday the United States would closely consult with South Korea and would not make any unilateral decisions on rearranging the troops.

"The United States is not going to do anything with regard to North Korea without close consultations and without the support of the South Korean government and that is the centerpiece of our policy," he was quoted as saying at a private forum by Yonhap news agency.

General Leon J. LaPorte, commander of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), confirmed Thursday that the U.S. planned to move its Yongsan base out of the capital but said key command posts would remain in Seoul.

LaPorte also serves as commander of the USFK combined forces command and would control not only U.S. soldiers but also South Korea's 600,000-strong military in the event of a war.

Wartime commanding rights and the presence of a sprawling U.S. military base in the center of the capital have long been seen as a stigma on South Korea as a sovereign country.

"We will discuss with the U.S. side to ensure that the rearrangement of US forces will not lead to any reduction in deterrence," Cho said.