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South Korea will push to start building an automatic scoring system at an air-to-surface bombing range for U.S. Air Force troops stationed here next month, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

"We will start construction of the scoring system on Jikdo sometime in September. It will take about four to six months to complete the construction of a weapons impact scoring set (WISS) there," said Brig. Gen. Choe Jong-il, deputy chief of the international cooperation bureau at the ministry.

In a press briefing, Choe said that South Korea will have to make every effort to bring out some 'visible achievements' before October, when South Korea and the United States are scheduled to hold a defense ministers' meeting.

"The U.S. military recently notified us that its pilots should fly out of South Korea for bombing exercises unless the problem is resolved by October," he told reporters.

Seoul and Washington are in the last stage of finalizing joint studies on the terms of a new alliance, with a focus on Seoul's greater role in its military operations.

The final results will be unveiled at the Security Consultative Meeting, an annual meeting in Washington of South Korean and U.S. defense ministers in October. The U.S. hopes to resolve the issue of securing a scoring system-equipped bombing range ahead of the meeting.

Earlier this month, a senior U.S. defense official warned that it will be a "very bad signal" for the alliance if U.S. Air Force troops in South Korea have to leave for training at overseas bombing ranges. Earlier this year, a group of U.S. A-10 anti-tank attack planes conducted a bombing exercise in Thailand.

The Defense Ministry has been carefully preparing to establish an automatic scoring system, called WISS, on Jikdo, the uninhabited islets, 70 kilometers off the southwestern port city of Gunsan, in a bid to mollify U.S. Air Force troops.

But residents in the neighboring islands have staged vehement protests, citing concerns about noise, environmental damage and accidents.

The U.S. complains that its Air Force cannot properly conduct bombing exercises since it shut down the Kooni Range in Maehyangri, southwest of Seoul, in August 2005, saying it presents a challenge to the alliance between the U.S. and South Korea.

Some U.S. military officials even threatened to move the 7th Air Force in Osan, 55 kilometers south of Seoul, to another location unless it is provided with improved training conditions.

U.S. Air Force pilots currently use two training ranges, including the Jikdo islets, together with their South Korean counterparts, but they are demanding that the ranges be equipped with state-of-the-art scoring facilities.

About 30,000 U.S. troops, including 9,000 Air Force service people, 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 Koreas are still technically in a state of war, since the Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The Seoul-Washington alliance has faced fundamental changes in recent years, as South Korea demands a greater role in its military operations to reduce its 680,000-strong military's dependence on 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.

Seoul, Aug. 16 (Yonhap News)