US says risk of war with China diminishing
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-02-03 20:03

Pace said that Pentagon's Quadrennial Report, to be released next week, will assess US military needs over the next 20 years.

"It will be a lookout, as best you can look out, 20 years into the future," he said.

South Korea's move to regain wartime control over its troops, which now would come under the operational control of the commander of US forces here in times of conflict, was welcome, he said.

"This is an opportunity, not a challenge," he said of talks scheduled for this year.

Pace was visiting Seoul for a change of command at the US military base here.

Outgoing commander General Leon LaPorte was replaced by General B.B. Bell as new head of US Forces in Korea and head of the combined US-South Korean command.

He also leads the UN Command, representing the 16 nations that fought against the communist North in the 1950-53 Korean War.

General Bell, taking command of the 30,000 US troops currently deployed in South Korea, said his top priority would be to help keep the peace on the Korean peninsula and to maintain the US-South Korea alliance, "the strongest and most successful alliance in the world."

South Korean Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-Ung, in a speech at the handover ceremony, thanked LaPorte for his leadership over the past four years during a "complex security situation" that included the war in Iraq and the North Korean nuclear standoff.