 Foreign Minister |
Staff Reporter
South Korea will not ask the United States to redeploy nuclear weapons on the peninsula despite North Korea's tactics to become a nuclear state, the country's top diplomat said Wednesday.
"That will never be an option to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions," Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yu Myung-hwan said at a forum in Seoul.
Redeployment of nuclear weapons should be carried out within the framework of global security and in that regard, policy coordination with the United States as part of its global nuclear strategy is crucial, he said.
"President Barack Obama has pledged to work toward a 'world free of nuclear weapons,"' he said. "We should press North Korea by using international politics."
Some conservatives in the country argue that the Seoul government should ask the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) to redeploy its tactical nuclear weapons to deter nuclear-armed North Korea.
The USFK removed its nuclear stockpiles in 1991. Prompted by mounting concerns about the security of such weapons in the former Soviet Union, then U.S. President George Bush announced in September 1991 that the United States would eliminate its entire worldwide inventory of ground-launched tactical nuclear weapons and would remove all nuclear weapons from surface ships and attack submarines.
Now the United States has instead pledged that it will provide South Korea with a nuclear umbrella to thwart North Korea's nuclear threat.
Yu said Seoul's hosting of a global nuclear summit in 2012 will help pressure the communist state.
"The summit will serve as the last message or warning to North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. This will be the last chance for the North to do so before 2012," he said.
Pyongyang is believed to have up to six nuclear weapons, U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said earlier this month.
The communist state pulled out of six-party denuclearization talks last year in protest of U.N. sanctions against it following the regime's test-firing of a long-range missile. The North later conducted a second underground nuclear test.
한국 미핵무기 재배치 반대
한국은 북한이 핵보유국이 되기 위한 전술을 펴는데도 불구하고 핵무기를 재배치하지 않겠다고 최 고위 외교관이 수요일 밝혔다.
유명환 외교부 장관은 서울에서 열린 한 포럼에서 “이는 북한이 핵야욕을 포기하도록 확신을 주기 위한 대안이 결코 되지 않는다”고 말했다.
유장관은 핵무기 재배치는 세계 안보의 틀내에서 이행돼야하며 이런 점에서 세계 핵전략의 일부로 미국과의 정책 공조가 결정적이라고 말했다.
그는 “버락 오바마 미 대통령은 ‘핵무기 없는 세상’을 향해 일하기로 다짐했다”며 “국제 정치를 이용, 북한에 압력을 가해야 한다”고 밝혔다.
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