Text Fwd: U.S. not mulling redeploying tactical nukes to S. Korea: official

Yonhap News
U.S. not mulling redeploying tactical nukes to S. Korea: official
By Hwang Doo-hyong
March 4, 2011

WASHINGTON, March 3 (Yonhap) -- The United States will not consider redeploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea despite growing concerns about North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, a senior U.S. official has said.

"Our policy remains to support a non-nuclear Korean peninsula," James Miller, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, told a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon. "The U.S. nuclear umbrella remains firmly over South Korea, and neither side believes that on peninsula, deployments are necessary to sustain that deterrent."

Miller was dismissing reports that the Obama administration will consider bringing tactical nuclear warheads back to South Korea in response to the North's threats of a nuclear war and other provocations.

North Korea has threatened to wage nuclear war and vowed to respond militarily to an annual South Korean-U.S. military exercise that began Monday.

The U.S. pulled all of its tactical nuclear weapons out of South Korea in 1991 as the two Koreas signed an agreement calling for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and inter-Korean rapprochement.

Washington since then has committed to providing so-called "extended deterrence," using all of the U.S. military might, including the nuclear umbrella and ballistic missiles, in defense of South Korea.

Some South Korean conservatives, however, have called for the redeployment of U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons or a nuclear-armed South Korea since North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 and test-fired ballistic missiles.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in January that North Korea's missiles and nuclear weapons will pose a threat to the U.S. within five years.

Then-South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said in November that he would consider discussing with the U.S. the redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons, although his remarks were quickly withdrawn by the presidential office, Cheong Wa Dae, and the Defense Ministry.

Nuclear-armed North Korea has made a series of provocations in recent months, including the sinking of a South Korean warship and shelling of a border island that killed 50 people last year.

In November, the regime disclosed a uranium enrichment plant that could be used to make nuclear weapons apart from its plutonium program. The North claims its intention is to generate electricity.

The U.S. fears any redeployment of tactical nuclear warheads in South Korea or the South's nuclear armament will trigger a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia and undermine international efforts to denuclearize the North through the six-party talks.

The U.S. maintains a nuclear cooperation agreement with South Korea that bans Seoul from enriching uranium or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

The nuclear talks have been stalled for more than two years due to the North's nuclear and missile tests and other provocations.

hdh@yna.co.kr