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SEOUL: North Korea’s military Monday criticized the cancellation
of a cutback in US troops based in South Korea, saying the decision
could affect ongoing nuclear disarmament moves.
Visiting US Defense Secretary Robert Gates last
week backed a troop promise made by President George Bush at an
April summit with South Korean President Lee Myung Bak.
Under a worldwide US troop realignment plan, the
two countries agreed in 2004 to cut the number in South Korea from
37,500 to 25,000 by the end of this year.
But Bush and Lee agreed to maintain American
troops at the current level of 28,500, citing North Korea’s
continuing military threat.
“This, in fact, amounted to confirming and
announcing to the world once again the US’ undisguised attempt to
perpetuate its presence in South Korea and Korea’s division,”
said a spokesman for the Panmunjom Mission of the Korean People’s
Army (KPA).
The spokesman’s statement, carried by the
North’s official Korean Central News Agency, accused Seoul and
Washington of preparing for war on the peninsula.
“Under this situation the KPA cannot remain a
passive onlooker to the above-said disturbing development, while
abandoning its nuclear deterrence,” it said.
“Should the US and the South Korean warlike
forces persist in their moves for a war against the DPRK [North
Korea] as now, the KPA will be left with no option but to further
bolster all its war deterrents.”
The statement said Seoul and Washington should
consider what effect “the daily aggravating military
confrontation” would have on six-party talks.
The talks, grouping the two Koreas, the United
States, Russia, China and Japan, have been negotiating the scrapping
of the North’s nuclear weapons program in return for diplomatic
and economic benefits.
North Korea is disabling its plutonium-producing
plants as part of a six-party agreement but has not yet made a
promised declaration of all its nuclear programs.
US State Department official Sung Kim was due in
Seoul late Monday en route to Pyongyang, where he will discuss the
disablement work.
-- AFP
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