The top US general in South Korea warned yesterday that Washington's handing back of wartime command over Seoul's forces could jeopardize the allies' ability to maintain their ceasefire with the North.
South Korea has requested it retake wartime command of its own military, which it turned over to the US-led UN Command during the 1950-1953 Korean War. The transition is to occur between 2009 and 2012.
The top US officer in South Korea, US Army General Burwell Bell -- who also serves as chief of the UN Command -- cautioned that changes to alliance structures must not harm the UN commander's ability to quickly mobilize forces to preserve the ceasefire between North and South.
"Unless addressed, this situation will make it impossible to credibly maintain the armistice," Bell said at a news conference.
He said the problem should be carefully considered during peacetime because on the Korean peninsula "crisis escalation could quickly, indeed almost instantaneously, lead to combat operations."
"There could be no time to make changes in our command structure while crisis escalates," he said.
"If we fail to make adjustments as military leaders, we fail in our responsibilities," Bell said.
North Korea has long maintained that the UN Command is irrelevant and a thinly veiled US effort to claim international legitimacy for its forces on the peninsula.
Some 29,500 US troops remain stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the Korean War.
Although other nations contributed forces during the original war in the 1950s, US troops are the only actual fighting elements facing North Korea left on the peninsula in addition to the South Korean military.
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