Defense minister rules out U.S. pre-emptive strikes

Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung said yesterday the United States will not initiate preemptive strikes against North Korea at this time and in any case a consensus between Seoul and Washington is a precondition to any military action.

Yoon also said that within two months, South Korea and the United States will propose a controversial North Korea crisis plan to deal with any possible internal turmoil in the communist regime.

During talks last weekend in Singapore, he and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld agreed to confine the operational plan to a conceptual level, apparently clearing up the question of sovereignty.

Yoon rejected the idea that Pentagon has been pressing the North on military options. North Korea has claimed there is a U.S. global strike contingency plan against the North and labeled the recent deployment of U.S. F-117 Stealth fighter jets in the South as a precursor to U.S. ambitions to topple the isolationist regime.

"A preemptive strike or a military action is out of the question at this stage. ...Countries around the world have tendencies to consider and establish operational plans, but the CONPLAN 8022 does not exist,: as far as he knows, Yoon said on local CBS radio.

He was referring to reports about a plan, known as CONPLAN 8022-02, that reportedly directs the military to assume and maintain readiness to attack hostile countries that are developing weapons of mass destruction, specifically Iran and North Korea.

"The United States used to send weapons and personnel to allies to train on terrain as part of rotation," Yoon said.

His comments came as Pyongyang hinted it might come back to the six-party talks, though it did not set a specific date.

South Korean officials, including President Roh Moo-hyun, have often made clear opposition to a possible U.S. pre-emptive strike on North Korea in the event of failure of the multilateral talks, noting there would be heavy casualties on the peninsula.

Referring to his decision with Rumsfeld not to include specific military measures in a plan for emergencies in the communist North, Yoon said the driving force is for research, not for execution.

In 2004, Washington proposed developing the joint contingency plan further, but Seoul rejected this, saying it would undermine the Korean government`s sovereignty and complicate the North Korean situation.

Instead, Seoul proposed in April to Washington that the two allies supplement or develop a conceptual plan only, without going into specifics.

"Korea and the United States will draft basic perspectives (about the conceptual plan), and military officials will coordinate the plan based on the drafts," Yoon said.

To improve and develop the conceptual plan, the two allies will launch a working-level military commission later this month to formulate joint responses to "various types of contingencies" on the Korean Peninsula.

Yoon said he has been invited to Japan by Defense Agency Director General Yoshinori Ono and will accept if the scheduled summit later this month between Roh and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi goes well in a "good atmosphere."

Seoul`s recent relations with Tokyo have been soured by renewed Japanese claims to the Korean-controlled Dokdo islands and new right-wing history textbooks which Koreans see as attempting to whitewash Japan`s World War II aggression.

(smjoo@heraldm.com)



By Joo Sang-min