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US anti-WMD troops join military drills in South Korea

Posted on: Fri March 12, 2010

SEOUL: US troops who would be tasked with eliminating North Korea s weapons of mass destruction in the event of armed conflict are participating in military drills with South Korea, the top US commander in the country said on Thursday.

 They are here for this exercise and if we ever went to war, they would naturally come also,  Army Gen Walter Sharp told reporters at Yongsan Garrison, the main US military headquartersin central Seoul.    

Sharp said that the troops are carrying out daily exercises with South Korean troops to practice locating, securing and eliminating the North s weapons of mass destruction.    

The North, believed to have enough weaponised plutonium for at least a half-dozen bombs, quit international disarmament-for-aid negotiations and conducted a second nuclear test last year, drawing tightened UN sanctions.    

Pyongyang also has been developing a long-range missile designed to strike the US, and has stockpiled between 2,500 and 5,000 tons of chemical agents and is believed to be capable of producing biological weapons, according to South Korea s Defence Ministry. What we are training for is all the threats that North Korea can throw at us,  Sharp said.    

Sharp s comments came as the North has been escalating its rhetoric against the US and South Korea over their annual military drills that began Monday.    

About 18,000 American soldiers and an undisclosed number of South Korean troops are taking part in the war games, dubbed Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, according to US and South Korean militaries. Some involve computer simulation.    

Pyongyang, which says they are a rehearsal for attack, warns it will bolster its nuclear capability and put its troops on high alert in response to the drills.    

The US says they are purely defensive and that it has no intention of invading the North.    

 We have done these exercises before,  State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters Wednesday. These should not be a surprise to North Korea.     

Sharp said the 28,500 US troops stationed in the South are prepared to deal with any contingency in North Korea, but called for a diplomatic solution to end North Korea s nuclear programmes and urged Pyongyang to rejoin stalled six-nation talks.    

Also Thursday, South Korea s prime minister said North Korea must listen to  international concerns over its atomic program and quickly return to negotiations.    

 North Korea s development of nuclear weapons is seriously undermining international non-nuclear proliferation regimes as well as posing a threat  to the region, Prime Minister Chung Un-chan told a Seoul forum.    

The North has demanded a lifting of the sanctions and peace talks with the US on formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War before it returns to the talks.    

The US and South Korea have responded that the North must first return to the negotiating table and make progress on denuclearization. The talks involve China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.    

Separately, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said at a lecture in Seoul that he supports sanctions not for the purpose of causing what he called chaos, but rather to provide the country a way out, into negotiations.  

Former UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei, however, told a forum earlier in the day that he believes sanctions will not work and called on the US to engage North Korea and assure it regarding security.

Courtesy : The News