By Xinhua,
Seoul : South Korea and the United States will hold a new round of high-level military talks to map out the scheduled transfer of the wartime operational control of South Korean troops to Seoul and other bilateral security issues on Wednesday, the South Korean Defense Ministry said Monday.
The talks, called the Security Policy Initiative (SPI), will beheld in Washington on Wednesday with some 15 officials on each side, said Won Tae-je, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry.
“The key agenda for the 18th SPI includes issues related to the transfer of the wartime operational control of South Korean troops, which will lead to the transfer of some responsibilities of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) to the South Korean military,” the spokesman said.
The South Korean delegation led by Deputy Defense Minister for Policy Jeon Jei-guk left for Washington earlier Monday, Won said.
The South Korean government is to retake the wartime operational control, often called OPCON, of its troops from the U.S. in 2012. The CFC will be abandoned following the transfer of the OPCON.
In a related discussion, the sides will also try to decide whether there should be any changes to the management of the Korean Armistice Agreement, a ceasefire pact that ended the 1950-53 Korean War, following the OPCON transfer, according to the ministry spokesman.
The armistice is currently overseen by the United Nations Command, which is headed by the chief of U.S. Forces Korea.
The two sides will also talk about the share of the cost of maintaining U.S. troops in South Korea Korea, the Defense Ministry said.
Under a cost-sharing agreement between the two sides, South Korea paid about 42 percent or some 740 billion won (728 million U.S. dollars)of the costs to maintain 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea in 2007.
The U.S. government has long asked South Korea to gradually increase its burden to 50 percent, but South Korean officials believe the two sides will likely agree to freeze South Korea’s share at the current level for the next two years.