Nukes option by U.S. in Korea

SEOUL — The United States is committed to defending South Korea from an attack by the North and would use nuclear forces if needed, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the government here yesterday.

Mr. Rumsfeld, who finishes his first official visit to Asia today, said the U.S. commitment to South Korea includes “the continued provision of a nuclear umbrella” for South Korea, according to a statement issued after joint security talks.

“We understand that weakness can be provocative, that weakness can invite people into doing things that they otherwise might not even consider,” Mr. Rumsfeld told a joint news conference with South Korean Defense Minister Cho Young-kil.

The two defense chiefs also discussed transferring some of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea to two areas south of the demilitarized zone.

The tasks carried out by the U.S. forces will be handed over to South Korean troops, including security for the truce area of Panmunjom at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas and the development of South Korean antiartillery capabilities.

Mr. Rumsfeld met with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and told him that the United States would like Seoul to send “self-sufficient” troops to Iraq that do not need the protection of U.S. combat forces or help with supplies, said a senior defense official at the meeting.

South Korea has said it will send additional troops in the coming months but did not say whether they will be combat troops or humanitarian forces. The dispatch of humanitarian forces would require protection from terrorist attacks and Iraqi insurgents by U.S. or allied troops.

At the annual defense talks, the two sides agreed that North Korea poses a “global threat,” the joint statement said.

Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cho share the “grave concern that North Korea’s self-acknowledged nuclear-weapons program threatens regional and global security and violates North Korea’s commitment to a nuclear-free peninsula.”

North Korea has not tested a nuclear device, but the CIA stated in a recent report to Congress that Pyongyang has “validated” atomic weapons design to the point of posing a credible nuclear threat.

North Korea is continuing to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles, and poses a danger of exporting the weapons and technologies, the statement said.

The United States pulled out all of its tactical nuclear weapons, including nuclear land mines, in the early 1990s. It was then that Washington promised to use its nuclear forces, primarily missile-equipped submarines, to counter any atomic threats to South Korea.

However, the explicit restatement of that promise was unusual, and appeared intended to pressure North Korea in upcoming nuclear arms talks and to persuade South Korea not to develop its own atomic weapons.

North Korea’s deployment of nuclear arms in the late 1990s shifted the strategic balance on the peninsula in Pyongyang’s favor.

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