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The United States has proposed to return wartime operational control of troops to South Korea before 2010, citing its improved defense capabilities, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

"The two sides are still consulting on the issue," a senior Defense Ministry official said on condition of anonymity, noting it is earlier than South Korea's proposal to regain the command in at least five years.

The U.S. proposal was made during last week's bilateral military talks, called Security Policy Initiative (SPI), which mainly tackled a timetable of the transfer of wartime operational command, according to the ministry.

The U.S. military is currently studying ways to establish its own command system separate from that of South Korea when Seoul regains the full operational control of its troops.

South Korea voluntarily put the operational control of its military under the American-led U.N. Command shortly after the Korean War broke out in 1950. It regained the peacetime control of its forces in 1994, but wartime operational control remains in the hands of the top U.S. commander here.

The two sides are moving to dismantle the Combined Forces Command (CFC) by 2012, a key step toward Seoul's planned takeover of wartime operational control of its forces.

Since October, the two allies have been reviewing a proposal to create separate command systems in the place of the existing CFC, as they are in favor of running two separate operational commands that they believe can better suit the needs of the two countries.

South Korea is also mulling the establishment of a new combined command body to replace the CFC or reinforcing the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC), which was formed to fight on South Korea's side during the Korean War.

Seoul plans to draw up a road map for the new system and present it to an annual meeting of the two countries' defense chiefs in Washington in October.

The Seoul-Washington alliance, forged in blood during the Korean War, has faced fundamental changes in recent years, as South Korea's 650,000-strong military is moving to reduce its dependence on the U.S. military.

About 30,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. The number is scheduled to go down to 25,000 by 2008.

The two sides already agreed to operate a joint panel to study what additional security roles South Korea should take over from the U.S. military.

The U.S., for its part, has also begun transforming its fixed military bases in South Korea into more mobile, streamlined forces as part of its global troop realignment plan.

The two Koreas are technically in a state of war, since the Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Seoul, July 19 (Yonhap News)