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During his two-day trip, Gates plans to meet his South Korean counterpart Kim Jang-soo for an annual ministerial-level Security Consultative Meeting to review the decades-long alliance between the two countries. At the meeting, the two defense chiefs will discuss the planned transfer of wartime operational control, relocation of American troops and the return of U.S. bases to South Korea, according to defense officials in Seoul.
Earlier this year, Seoul and Washington agreed on a roadmap for transferring wartime operational control of South Korean troops from the United States in 2012. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has pushed for taking back this control from the U.S. military as part of efforts to bolster the country's self-defense capability, despite concerns that it would weaken the security alliance, which has effectively deterred another invasion from the North.
Roh's scheme has further strained the alliance, already damaged by differences over how to cope with nuclear and missile threats from the North. Since taking office in 2003, Roh has sought to distance his country from the United States, pledging to lay the groundwork for a self-defense system independent of Washington within 10 years during his five-year term that ends in early 2008.
Seoul and Washington are also in the process of realigning American troops in South Korea, consolidating U.S. military bases across the peninsula into Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers south of Seoul, and returning 66 bases and installations to South Korea by 2011, which would be the biggest realignment of American forces in this country since the 1950-53 Korean War. Some 29,500 U.S. troops are stationed here, and the number is to be downsized again to 25,000 by 2008 as part of Washington's global troop realignment plan.
In a move that could further weaken the alliance, Roh dismissed U.S. concerns about a nuclear connection between North Korea and Syria and questioned the credibility of U.S. media reports on the nuclear cooperation.
"I have never seen any evidence nor have I received an explanation along those lines," Roh said in an interview with Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper last week. "Uncertain issues and minor hurdles should not be allowed to throw the six-party talks (on North Korea's nuclear weapons program) off track," he was quoted as saying. His remarks came after Gates warned the United States would have a "real problem" if Syria and North Korea are collaborating on a nuclear program.
U.S. chief nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill also expressed concerns about possible transfers of the North's nuclear technology, saying proliferation has been a "primary concern of ours all along."
Roh also made clear that South Korea has a different stance from the United States on signing a peace treaty with North Korea to replace the current armistice that technically ended the Korean War. Washington insists that denuclearization of North Korea must be a precondition to any declaration of the formal end of the Korean War and conclusion of a peace treaty with the North. But Roh said the declaration of the end of the Korean War can be made even before the dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons program is verified.
"The dismantlement of the nuclear program will actually take a long time. So it is unrealistic to begin procedures for a peace treaty after the drawn-out nuclear dismantlement finally comes to an end," Roh told Asahi.
However, to ensure U.S. support in ending the long standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons drive, Roh recently decided to extend his country's troop deployment in Iraq for another year. South Korea sent 3,600 troops, including combatants and military engineers, to Iraq's Kurdish city of Irbil in 2004 for relief and rehabilitation work as the United States' second-largest coalition partner after Britain in Iraq. It reduced the number to 1,200 after extending the military presence.
On the back of the Iraqi troop decision, South Korea is expected to ask the United States to sell it some Global Hawks -- unmanned aerial vehicles -- during this week's defense talks. The unmanned spy plane, each priced at around US$50 million, is considered a key strategic weapon and is under strict export restrictions, meaning that Congressional approval is needed before the UAV can be sold abroad.
Seoul officials said the surveillance aircraft is necessary as its deterrence would be weakened following Washington's reshaping of American troops in South Korea.
