nuclear-news

USA not putting tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea

U.S. not mulling redeploying tactical nukes to S. Korea: official, By Hwang Doo-hyong, WASHINGTON, March 3 (Yonhap) — The United States will not consider redeploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea despite growing concerns about North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, a senior U.S. official has said. “Our policy remains to support a non-nuclear Korean peninsula,” James Miller, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, told a House Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon. “The U.S. nuclear umbrella remains firmly over South Korea, and neither side believes that on peninsula, deployments are necessary to sustain that deterrent.”
Miller was dismissing reports that the Obama administration will consider bringing tactical nuclear warheads back to South Korea in response to the North’s threats of a nuclear war and other provocations.

North Korea has threatened to wage nuclear war and vowed to respond militarily to an annual South Korean-U.S. military exercise that began Monday.

The U.S. pulled all of its tactical nuclear weapons out of South Korea in 1991 as the two Koreas signed an agreement calling for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and inter-Korean rapprochement.

Washington since then has committed to providing so-called “extended deterrence,” using all of the U.S. military might, including the nuclear umbrella and ballistic missiles, in defense of South Korea……..

The U.S. maintains a nuclear cooperation agreement with South Korea that bans Seoul from enriching uranium or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

The nuclear talks have been stalled for more than two years

U.S. not mulling redeploying tactical nukes to S. Korea: official

March 4, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | South Korea, weapons and war