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Washington told Seoul last May it planned to dump War Reserve Stocks for Allies-Korea (WRSA-K) -- ordinance reserves for use by Korea in an emergency - but the government kept the announcement to itself, it emerged Friday.
"Then-defense deputy secretary Paul Wolfowitz sent an official letter to then-defense minister Cho Yong-gil on May 20 of last year informing him of plans to do away with the WRSA-K," the U.S. Forces Korea said Friday. The stocks consists of about 600,000 tons of materiel worth about W5 trillion (US$5 billion). Some 99 percent of it is ammunition. That is 60-70 percent of the ammunition stocks Korea would need in an emergency and is therefore crucial to Korea's ability to carry out a war.
Resulting from the move, there is expected to be controversy between Korea and the U.S. over how to dispose of the reserves. The stocks might be sold to Korea, destroyed inside Korea or taken by the U.S. outside of Korea.
Wolfowitz wrote the plan called for a two-year-and-six-month period for Korea to prepare for the loss of the reserves; the scrapping of the WRSA is supposed to be completed by December 2006. Wolfowitz said the WRSA-K and the Critical Requirements Deficiency List (CRDL) played an important role in maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula but were no longer serving their original goal of boosting Korea's ammunition distribution power or deterrent strength. He said the CRDL would be suspended in December 2004 and the WRSA-K scrapped two years later.
CRDL usually refers to bombs and equipment needed within the first 30 days after the outbreak of a war.
The USFK said Friday it considered the situation of Korea, the world's 11th largest economic power, and ¡°judged that the WRSA plan had continued longer than initially planned, and that its maintenance has been unnecessary for several years."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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