S. Korea, U.S. to delay wartime command transfer, speed up FTA

Yonhap News ^ | 6/26/2010 | Lee Chi-dong

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his American counterpart Barack Obama announced a three-year delay in Washington's transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) to Seoul, citing the volatile atmosphere on the Korean Peninsula with North Korea's continued military provocations, most recently a deadly naval attack on a warship.

The leaders also agreed to make concrete efforts to revive their long-stalled free trade agreement talks, as Obama set November as the deadline for completing necessary discussions.

Obama began the summit with Lee with a show of his resolve to make North Korea pay a price for sinking a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in March, according to South Korean officials.

"There has to be consequences for such irresponsible behavior," he told reporters after the meeting just ahead of the opening of a G-20 economic summit here.

Obama accepted Lee's request to postpone the OPCON transition until Dec. 1, 2015 from the original target date of April 17, 2012 agreed in 2007 between their predecessors.

"One of the topics that we discussed is that we have arrived at an agreement that the transition of operational control for alliance activities on the Korean Peninsula will take place in 2015," Obama said. "This gives us appropriate time -- within the existing security context -- to do this right. "We want to make sure that we execute what's called the OPCON transition in an effective way."

[Deagle]

Not a bad idea with the rambunctious North Koreans...