The Hindu : Protests greet Rumsfeld in Seoul

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2003

International

International

Protests greet Rumsfeld in Seoul

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Nov. 17. South Korea and the U.S. today sought to redefine their military alliance even as protesters greeted the American Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in Seoul. The protest themes pertained mainly to the perceived American gameplan of pushing South Korean military personnel into Iraq.

After the one-day annual security consultative meeting, Mr. Rumsfeld said the `adjustments' on the disposition of the U.S. troops in South Korea would `deter' and `defeat aggressions' against South Korea. The presence of 37,000 American troops — a critical aspect of the overall U.S. "forward deployment'' in East Asia — is the essence of their alliance.

The `adjustment' relates to the plan that the two countries have been seeking, during the past several months, to fashion. While Mr. Rumsfeld noted today that "new (military) technologies'' and "new capabilities'' had now made it possible to bring about changes in the deployment of U.S. troops in South Korea, the political purpose was to shift a number of them away from the `demilitarised' border with North Korea.

About Iraq, where South Korea has some 500 engineers and medical professionals from its military units on "logistical duties'', Mr. Rumsfeld indicated that he would not wish to make an issue of Seoul's disinclination to send to that West Asian country as many combat troops as the U.S. might like. At stake now is the South Korean move to despatch about 3,000 military persons, preferably on "non-combat duties'', in view of the worsening security situation there, as against the U.S. `requirements' of "combat-ready'' fighters from other countries.

It was against this background that the protesters in Seoul said `no' to the perceived U.S. military's plan to deploy South Korean soldiers as "bullet shields'' for its own fighters in Iraq.A joint statement said the U.S. raised the North Korean nuclear issue during the talks and called upon Pyongyang to "completely, verifiably and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear-weapons programme and to cease the testing, development, deployment and export of weapons of mass destruction, missiles and related technologies''.

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