Asia-Pacific
ROK denies reports on delay of wartime command transfer
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-04-22 14:37
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SEOUL - The government of Republic of Korea (ROK) denied Thursday local media reports that Seoul and Washington have virtually agreed to delay transferring wartime operational control from the United States back to ROK, originally scheduled to take place in 2012.
"Some media reports that ROK President Lee Myung-bak and US President Barack Obama discussed (delaying) the transfer at the nuclear summit in Washington are not factually accurate. The two countries never formally discussed the issue,"the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said in a statement.
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The decision, according to Dong-A Ilbo, will be announced after a summit in June on the sidelines of the G20 summit among the world's major economies.
"Customarily, we do not confirm details of what the heads of the states discussed. The reports are also factually wrong," the foreign ministry in Seoul said in a statement.
ROK's defense chief Kim Tae-young recently said the ROK government is reviewing security concerns regarding the transfer not just at a military level but also at the " national level," hinting at possible negotiations on the issue. Seoul's wartime operational control was handed over to the US-led United Nations Command at the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War, which was later transferred to the ROK-US Combined Forces Command (CFC), while about 28,500 US troops have been stationed here following the war.
Seoul and Washington have sought to replace the US-led combined forces command with a Seoul-led joint command system, which the former liberal-leaning President Roh Moo-hyun welcomed but critics in Seoul rejected for fear of less security commitment by Washington.
Conservatives here have voiced concern that the transfer would significantly weaken deterrence against potential threats from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as the two sides remain technically at war after the civil war ended with a truce instead of a formal peace treaty.
Meanwhile, General Walter Sharp, commander of US Forces Korea, recently said the transition will be carried out as scheduled, and that the US forces will remain committed, calling vociferous security concerns here "misunderstandings."
