South Korean President Park Geun-hye and U.S. President Barack Obama are not expected to discuss the THAAD missile defense system when they hold a summit in Washington next month, a senior American official said Thursday.
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel made the remark during a Foreign Press Center briefing, saying the two allies have not even begun government-to-government discussions on the sensitive topic.
“I do not expect President Obama and President Park to discuss the issue of THAAD ballistic missile defense because typically, those sorts of specific defense system questions need to be worked through the system before they get to the leaders’ level for consultation or decision,” Russel said.
“We have not begun government-to-government consultations over the THAAD system,” he said.
The U.S. wants to deploy a THAAD missile interceptor battery to South Korea, where some 28,500 American troops are stationed, to better defend against ever-growing threats from North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs.
But the issue has become one of the most sensitive in South Korea because China and Russia see a potential THAAD deployment as a threat to their security interests and have increased pressure on Seoul to reject such a deployment.
Seoul and Washington have maintained they have never held formal consultations on the issue.
But the issue came to the forefront again this week as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Seoul that a provocative North Korea is “why we are talking about THAAD,” and the remark was seen as running counter to what the two sides have said so far.
Russel said Kerry’s remark was “misinterpreted or misreported in the media as implying that there are some bilateral discussions.”
“He was very clear that he was simply talking what we ourselves are considering,” he said.
Russel said, however, that Park and Obama are expected to discuss threats posed by North Korea’s missile program. He said the recent test-firing by the communist nation of a submarine-launched ballistic missile was a “blatant violation” of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
“I know this issue is being discussed in New York,” Russel said, apparently meaning that the U.N. Security Council is taking up the issue of the North’s SLBM launch.
“It is one of a series of provocative, threatening steps that North Korea has been taking that underscores the fact that North Korea is trying to scare us where it should be trying to negotiate with us,” he said.
The diplomat stressed that the Korea-U.S. alliance is very strong and the U.S. commitment to South Korea’s defense is “rock solid and our capabilities are much stronger than they have ever been before.”
He added, “The continued development of the ballistic missile technology in tandem with North Korea’s ongoing nuclear program accounts for the fact that we have introduced various systems and significantly strengthened our defense so as to affectively mitigate that threat from North Korea.” (Yonhap)
