2010-07-21 06:32

BEIJING - Washington and Seoul will launch a military drill on Sunday targeting Pyongyang in the Sea of Japan, delaying a similar move in the Yellow Sea after opposition from Beijing over the joint exercise.

Republic of Korea (ROK) Defense Minister Kim Tae-young (left) welcomes US Defense Secretary Robert Gates before their meeting at the Defense Ministry in Seoul on Tuesday. [Agencies]

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Republic of Korea (ROK) counterpart Kim Tae-young made the announcement after meeting in Seoul on Tuesday.

The two sides said their drill, which will be held from July 25 to 28, is designed to send a "clear message to North Korea that its aggressive behavior must stop" in the wake of the deadly sinking of ROK warship Cheonan in March that has been blamed on Pyongyang.

The first US-ROK drill will involve 10 US ships including the 97,000-ton aircraft carrier USS George Washington and eight ROK vessels, Gates said.

The joint exercise will also involve more than 200 fighter planes from both sides, the Seoul-based Yonghap News Agency reported.

The US F-22 raptor, which can reportedly attack Pyongyang's Yongbyon nuclear facilities only half an hour after departure, will also debut on the Korean Peninsula.

The two allies announced plans of more drills in both the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, without specifying dates.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Tuesday condemned the planned drills. A signed commentary in the Minju Joson newspaper described the plan as "very dangerous saber-rattling aimed at further straining the already deadlocked inter-Korean relations", the State-run Korean Central News Agency reported.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has not yet responded to the latest announcement.

Beijing has strongly protested against the exercise first set in the Yellow Sea near its coast. The joint drill is very dangerous for China with Beijing under the attacking sphere of the US aircraft carrier, military analysts had said.

The US-ROK joint exercise was repeatedly delayed and partially located to the Sea of Japan with the aircraft carrier to stop further straining US-China military relations, which have been frozen since the White House tried to push forward a massive arms deal with Taiwan earlier this year, analysts said.

Beijing in June said it was inconvenient for it to receive Gates for a planned visit. Gates on Tuesday said that the upcoming joint drills are routine and not targeted at China.

"These exercises are off the coast of Korea, not off the coast of China. These are exercises like we have conducted for decades in the past," he told reporters. "There is nothing provocative about them at all."

But a number of analysts said the latest move signaled a consideration for Chinese concerns.

"The US and ROK have taken our feelings into account this time ... ideally we would want the drill to be far off our sea territory," Li Qinggong, deputy secretary-general of the China Council for National Security Policy Studies, told China Daily.

The DPRK has also benefited from the change in the schedule of the exercise as the new date and location have "lessened pressure" on it, Li said.

The US now wants to get the Six-Party Talks back on track to better focus on Iran, Li said.

"If the ROK continues taking a harsh tone with the DPRK, then the US-ROK relation might slightly change as well," Li said.

Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of DPRK studies at Seoul-based Dongguk University, also told Bloomberg that restricting the US-ROK drill to the east coast suggests a concession to China.

"The Cheonan incident helped bring to the surface the conflicting military interests between the US and China regarding the Korean peninsula," Kim said.

"The US and DPRK would have to accommodate China's security concerns in the region if they were to use China's leverage in solving the DPRK issues."

Still, despite high expectations from Seoul, Li said the scale of the first exercise in the Sea of Japan "is not significantly different from previous ones".

The US has already stopped manufacturing the F-22 due to its low popularity among international buyers, he said.

"Japan once wanted to buy a lot but then gave up the plan after research, and the Russians never liked the F-22 too much."

Seoul and Washington are scheduled to hold unprecedented high-level security talks involving top diplomats and defense chiefs of the two countries on the next steps over Pyongyang.

The Pentagon on Monday announced that the USS George Washington will make a five-day port visit to the ROK from Wednesday, accompanied by three destroyers from its strike group.

Based in Yokosuka, Japan, the vessel is the US Navy's only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier.

China Daily