Gates reaffirms commitment to nuclear umbrella for S. Korea

By Hwang Doo-hyong

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 (Yonhap) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday his government will continue to a provide nuclear umbrella for South Korea and other allies against threats in order to prevent such countries from seeking their own nuclear capabilities.

"As long as other states have or seek nuclear weapons and potentially can
threaten us, our allies and friends, then we must have a deterrent capacity that
makes it clear that challenging the United States in the nuclear arena or with
other weapons of mass destruction could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic
response," Gates said in a speech to a forum here sponsored by Carnegie
Endowment.
His remarks come a couple of weeks after he reaffirmed Washington's commitment to
the defense of South Korea despite the reshaping of the decades-old alliance
under which South Korea will retake wartime operational control of its troops.
At the end of an annual Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) at the Pentagon with
South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee, Gates assured Minister Lee of "firm
U.S. commitment and immediate support toward the ROK, including continuation of
the extended deterrence offered by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, consistent with the
ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty." The Republic of Korea is South Korea's official
name.
North Korea detonated its first nuclear device in 2006, and is believed to have
several nuclear warheads.
The North recently resumed disabling its nuclear facilities as the U.S. lifted
Pyongyang from its terrorism blacklist in return for Pyongyang's agreement to let
in international nuclear inspectors to its declared nuclear facilities and
undeclared sites, though on mutual consent.
Gates singled out North Korea and Iran as possible nuclear threats.
"There is little doubt that some nations will continue to think that possession
of nuclear weapons is the best way to preserve their regime or threaten their
neighbors," Gates said. "We remain concerned that this is the case with North
Korea and Iran today as it was with Libya and Iraq in the past."
The defense secretary said the U.S. goal should be nuclear nonproliferation.
"Our goal continues to be to keep the number of nuclear states as limited as
possible and to this end, non-proliferation and arms control efforts have had
real successes over the last 45 years," he said.
He cited South Korea and several other countries as examples in which the U.S.
had successfully dissuaded them from going nuclear.
"South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Libya have all forsaken
nuclear weapons for a variety of reasons and our nuclear umbrella, our extended
deterrent underpins our alliances in Europe and in the Pacific and enables our
friends, especially those worried about Tehran and Pyongyang to continue to rely
on our nuclear deterrent rather than to develop their own," he said.
South Korea's former President Park Chung-hee was suspected of having pursued a
secret nuclear weapons program to deter attacks by its communist archrival North
Korea, which was believed to be trying to build a nuclear arsenal as early as the
early 1970s.
The U.S., however, blocked South Korea's imports of French and Canadian reactors,
fearing a nuclear-armed South Korea might provoke the North, and then Japan, to
follow suit, making the security situation in Northeast Asia more volatile.
Pessimists say North Korea is using the six-party talks as a means to buy time
until it is eventually recognized as a nuclear weapons state, much like India and
Pakistan, which normalized ties with the U.S. after years of sanctions following
their nuclear detonations in the late 1990s.
North Korea considers its nuclear arsenal the only working deterrent against a
possible invasion from the U.S., and says Saddam Hussein of Iraq fell due to a
lack of nuclear warheads.