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By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer SINGAPORE - The United States will make fundamental changes in its troop presence on the Korean Peninsula as well as in Europe, where US defenses have stood guard against threats that have disappeared or no longer require such a large force, Defense Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld said Thursday.
Special Coverage "It's time to adjust those locations from static defense to a more agile and a more capable and a more 21st century posture," Rumsfeld said. Rumsfeld spoke with reporters flying with him to Singapore, the island city-state where he is to deliver the keynote address Saturday at an Asian security conference. But his remarks left little doubt that the first major changes are about to happen.
The Pentagon has not said whether that unit would return to South Korea. During a news conference aboard an Air Force E4-B modified 747 jumbo jet, which serves as a flying national command post equipped for use in wartime, Rumsfeld spoke on a variety of topics. They included the conflict in Iraq and his hope that more countries would decide to send troops to help the United States stabilize the country. Rumsfeld chided critics who say the lack of stability raises the possibility of the Iraq war's ultimate failure. "People who look at it and say, Oh, my goodness it's untidy and it's ugly and it's dangerous,' ought to look at history. It's always been untidy and ugly and dangerous" when people who are used to being ruled are given a chance to build a democracy, he said.
"This country will not weaken the deterrent or the defense capabilities that we have, even though numbers and locations may shift and evolve as technologies evolve and as circumstances change," he said. "We have been for a long time, in effect, where we were when the Cold War ended." There are about 37,000 US troops in South Korea, about 47,000 in Japan and about 100,000 in Europe. Rumsfeld flew 22 hours nonstop from Washington to Singapore, with three midair refuelings, to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue. At the international security conference, he is to deliver a speech on US security policy on Asia and the Pacific on Saturday. The Pentagon chief said he also planned to meet separately with his counterparts from Japan, South Korea, Australia and Singapore, in addition to visiting US sailors and Marines aboard the USS Essex, a helicopter carrier in port at Singapore. At the Singapore conference one year ago, Rumsfeld sent his chief deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who spoke repeatedly in his keynote address of "our success in Iraq," about six weeks after the fall of Baghdad.
web sites) as "our victory," and while he noted that much work remained to be done, the deputy secretary gave no hint that he foresaw the onset of a bloody insurgency. Since then more than 600 American troops have died in Iraq.
He said he did not intend to formally request that they send troops to either country. Among the more important changes that have occurred in East Asia since Rumsfeld made his only previous visit to the region as defense secretary, late last year, was the Pentagon's decision to break a decades-long tradition of not using Korea-based US troops for combat elsewhere. The recently announced decision to send 3,600 2nd Infantry soldiers to Iraq -- probably by midsummer -- caught the South Korean government by surprise and reflected a major change in the way the Bush administration views the US role in Korea. Without tying his comments directly to South Korea, Rumsfeld appeared to be alluding to the anti-American protests that are staged periodically in Seoul when he said, "We want our forces where they're wanted, where it's hospitable." US and South Korean government officials are due to hold talks next week in Seoul on the future of their alliance. The talks are to include the sensitive subject of further US troops withdrawals.
Bush Pushes Faith-Based Aid Initiative (AP) Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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