The United States will deploy some of its troops in Korea to other conflict regions in the future to meet growing regional security challenges, Yonhap News reported in Washington, quoting the top U.S. military officer has saiying.
"Part of the discussion we are having with the Republic of Korea, with the leadership, and what we will be able to do in the next several years is support for deployments, literally, off of the peninsula," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told U.S. soldiers at the Camp Red Cloud, north of Seoul, Tuesday, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon.
"But we're not there yet. We haven't got to that point in time. But will there be rotational options? And part of this is, quite frankly, a regional issue."
Mullen was in Seoul to attend the inaugural two-plus-two meeting of foreign and defense ministers of South Korea and the U.S. Wednesday amid heightening tensions after North Korea's torpedoing of a South Korean warship in March. Forty-six sailors died when the Cheonan sank in the Yellow Sea.
The ministers announced plans to conduct joint military exercises in the Yellow Sea and East Sea in the coming month from Sunday in a show of deterrence against North Korea, despite opposition from China as well as North Korea.
Mullen was saying the Obama administration is following the strategic flexibility posture drawn up by the Bush administration for rapid deployment of U.S. troops abroad to conflict regions.
The U.S. maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea as the legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, when the U.S. fought for South Korea against invading communist North Korean troops aided by China and the former Soviet Union. They are part of more than 400,000 American forces stationed abroad, including Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We have longstanding relations not just with the ROK, but also with Japan," Mullen said. "We have emerging relationships with other countries in the area -- Vietnam, Cambodia -- strong, long-lasting relationships with Singapore, et cetera. So the forces we have here are very much in support of all that, as well. We haven't worked any of the details out on how that might happen in the future, and whether it would include a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan or somewhere else. So we're just not there, yet."
Mullen, however, reconfirmed the U.S. commitment to retain the current level of U.S. troops for the coming years, saying, "What I said earlier about 28,500, that's the commitment and that's where we are."