By Yoo Dong-ho
Staff Reporter
South Korea and the United States have struck a deal to delay by three years a U.S. plan to pull 12,500 troops from the Korean peninsula, the Defense Ministry announced Wednesday.

``The two allies concluded a final agreement on the redeployment of U.S. Forces Korea after taking into consideration the concerns of South Korean nationals on the weakening of the deterrence against North Korea,’’ Ahn Kwang-chan, deputy defense minister for policy, said at a news conference.

The plan was originally supposed to be executed by the end of 2005, but the deadline has now been extended to 2008.

The accord came two months after Seoul formally requested a delay in the U.S. troop cutbacks amid the continuing dispute over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs, which has now dragged on for two years.

Under the deal, the U.S. will relocate 5,000 troops out of South Korea this year, including the 3,600 already redeployed to Iraq from their base near the border with North Korea in August.

At the next phase, the U.S. military plans to pull out 3,000 troops in 2005 and 2,000 in 2006, mainly consisting of combat units.

The remaining 2,500 U.S. troops, consisting of other supporting units, will be withdrawn from the peninsula in 2007 or 2008, bringing the total remaining U.S. force to about 24,500.

The U.S. will also retain its counter-fire assets, including Multiple Launch Rocket System batteries, counter-battery radars and Apache units, which have been the cornerstone of Washington’s security commitment to South Korea. The retention is aimed at neutralizing the threat of long-range North Korean artillery.

In June Washington said it would slash its 37,500 troops here by one-third before December next year, stoking security jitters among South Koreans.

In recent weeks, Seoul negotiators asked their Washington counterparts to leave key forces and push back the timeline for the troop cutback by several years to give South Korea time to take up a self-reliant defense posture. But several rounds of high- and working-level security dialogue ended without a breakthrough.

The U.S. says its planned troop reduction in South Korea is part of a new global strategy to transform its Cold War-era fixed military bases overseas into more flexible, mobile units to better cope with new security threats, such as terrorism.

It has long maintained the troop reduction would not weaken the deterrent against North Korea, citing its commitment to spend $11 billion on new sophisticated weapons systems for U.S. forces on the peninsula over the next three years.

yoodh@koreatimes.co.kr