Security meeting comes up short

At their annual security consultative meeting yesterday, South Korea and the United States failed to agree on the terms for the planned relocation of a U.S. military base in central Seoul and on the specifics of the proposed dispatch of additional South Korean soldiers to Iraq.
Cho Young-kil, South Korea’s minister of defense, and Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. secretary of defense, issued a 12-point joint communique at the conclusion of the 35th annual ministerial meeting at Seoul’s Defense Ministry headquarters. “Secretary Rumsfeld and Minister Cho expressed their regret that the two sides were unable to conclude the agreements before the meeting,” the statement said. The two defense chiefs stressed Seoul and Washington’s commitment to move the Yongsan garrison, which houses the headquarters of U.S. troops in Korea, to area outside Seoul and agreed to continue negotiations.
The breakdown highlighted once again the delicate political problems of the Roh administration in trying to find a balance between Koreans who want a U.S. military presence in the heart of Seoul for its symbolic or real deterrence value and those who abhor the presence of foreign troops here.
Although not saying so specifically, Seoul wanted a continued U.S. presence in the capital as a gesture to conservatives and to those who see the U.S. troop presence in the city as a symbol of the U.S. deterrent role against North Korea. The Pentagon wanted to keep about one-third of the current Yongsan garrison site for that residual presence or move out of the city entirely. Despite U.S. arguments that it needed that much land to give its troops a good quality of life here, Seoul feared that U.S. retention of 228 acres of the 660-acre site would inflame the sentiments of Koreans who want U.S. troops out of the city or even out of the country entirely. Those groups are part of President Roh’s somewhat left-of-center core constituency.
The proposed residual U.S. presence in the city would have been the staff and their families working at the United Nations Command and the U.S.-South Korea Combined Forces Command. Or, Korean officials quoted the U.S. side as saying, the two headquarters could move to Osan and Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul.
South Korea reportedly offered 139 acres of the Yongsan garrison. “We agreed on the principles, but the two sides still need working-level discussions on where to locate the Combined Forces Command and supporting facilities,” Minister Cho said, adding that he wanted an agreement by the end of the year. The two sides had agreed to complete the relocation by 2006 in previous rounds of defense policy talks.
Another sticking point of the Cho-Rumsfeld talks was the size and composition of the South Korean contingent to be sent to Iraq.
“Secretary Rumsfeld expressed his appreciation for President Roh Moo-hyun’s decision to provide additional forces in Iraq and $260 million in Iraq reconstruction funds from 2003 to 2007,” the statement said. Conspicuously missing in the statement and in the question-and-answer session after the meeting was any clear statement by Mr. Rumsfeld that the United States had accepted Seoul’s proposal. In a recent meeting with ministers, Mr. Roh said he would send no more than 3,000 troops to join the 500 engineers and medical personnel already in Iraq. Mr. Roh also said the additional troops should focus on reconstruction projects, not security patrols.
Mr. Rumsfeld told a questioner at the news conference yesterday that the decision on troops was up to each government providing the forces, obviously not the response that Seoul had expected. Ra Jong-yil, the national security adviser, answered “yes” to reporters when asked if negotiations on the troop issue had been concluded.
The Blue House defense advisor, Kim Hee-sang, and Rhee Bong-jo, policy director of the National Security Council, also said that Washington had accepted Seoul’s proposal.

by Ser Myo-ja