BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) :
The United States and South Korea will go ahead with joint military drills next week, the top U.S. military official said on Thursday, resisting pressure from North Korea and its ally China to halt the contentious exercises.
North Korea’s rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland has fueled a rise in tensions in recent months.
U.S. President Donald Trump warned North Korea last week it would face “fire and fury” if it threatened the United States, prompting North Korea to say it was considering plans to fire missiles at the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.
Annual military drills involving tens of thousands of U.S. and South Korean troops are due to begin on Monday.
North Korea views such exercises as preparations to invade it.
China, North Korea’s main ally and trading partner, has urged the United States and South Korea to scrap the drills in exchange for North Korea calling a halt to its weapons programs.
Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the exercises were “not currently on the table as part of the negotiation at any level”.
“My advice to our leadership is that we not dial back our exercises. The exercises are very important to maintaining the ability of the alliance to defend itself,” Dunford told reporters in Beijing after meeting his Chinese counterparts.
“As long as the threat in North Korea exists, we need to maintain a high state of readiness to respond to that threat,” he said. Fan Changlong, a vice chairman of China’s powerful Central Military Commission, told Dunford that China believed the only effective way to resolve the issue was through talks.
“China believes that dialogue and consultations are the only effective avenue to resolve the peninsula issue, and that military means cannot become an option,” China’s Defence Ministry cited Fan as saying.
Asked to respond to the criticism that China’s “dual suspension” proposal to halt the U.S. military drills with South Korea and the North’s missile tests made a false equivalence between the two, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said it was the most realistic and achievable solution.
“To ease the tense situation created by tit-for-tat escalations, to halt this vicious cycle, there is a need to put aside the dispute over who goes first and who goes second,” she said, speaking at a regular briefing.
North Korea has in the past fired missiles and taken other steps in response to such exercises.
Arriving in Tokyo on Thursday, the new U.S. ambassador to Japan, William Hagerty, said America’s ability to defend itself and its allies against North Korea was “beyond question”.
He reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to its alliance with Tokyo, a security pact he described as “ironclad.”
Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi meets General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Zhongnanhai Leadership Compound in Beijing on August 17, 2017.Wang/Zhao/Pool
Allies the United States and South Korea remain technically at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.
