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U.S. defense chief arrives in S. Korea for three-day visit

Xinhua, April 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter arrived in South Korea, the second leg of his first Asian tour since he took office in February, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said Thursday.

The official said by phone that Carter arrived in the afternoon in Osan Air Base near Seoul, without elaborating further.

After finishing the three-day tour to Japan, one of the two major U.S. allies in Asia along with South Korea, he flied over to Seoul.

During his three-day stay here, Carter is scheduled to hold face-to-face talks with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-koo Friday and meet with other government officials. He will also spend time encouraging about 28,500 U.S. forces stationed here.

Among official agendas for the bilateral defense ministers' talks would be ways of addressing nuclear and missile threats from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the transfer of wartime operational control of South Korean forces from Washington to Seoul.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said that the deployment of the advanced U.S. missile defense system, called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), on the Korean Peninsula will not be on the agenda for the bilateral defense dialogue.

But, much attention is being paid to whether the U.S. defense chief would mention the THAAD issue during joint press conference Friday after the talks with Han. Endi