South Korea intends to create own missile defense - ambassador
MOSCOW. July 24 (Interfax) - South Korea has not received an official proposal by the United States on placing missile defense elements on its territory but Seoul intends to design missile defense on its own.
"We will create a missile defense taking into account the peculiarities of the situation on the peninsula. We will have our own system," South Korean Ambassador to Russia Wi Son Lak said in an interview with Interfax.
"Official proposals by the U.S. on placing missile defenses in South Korea have not come," the ambassador said.
At the same time, the ambassador said: "We are forced to exchange information with the U.S. but the system itself [designed by Seoul] is not part of the global U.S. missile defense."
"Our attention is concentrated on North Korea and when Russian colleagues ask us about possible placement of U.S. missile defense elements in Korea, we always explain the our stance and present our arguments," he said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier on Thursday that it took with caution the statement by Seoul on the possibility of placing U.S. missile defense elements in South Korea and that it warned this would have negative affect on global strategic stability.
"We took note of the statements by the Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin who did not rule out the likelihood of South Korea hosting the U.S. THAAD missile defense systems as part of the U.S. military presence there. Such remarks are certainly alarming, given that previously the government of the Republic of Korea repeatedly announced its intention to counter likely missile threats on its own," the Russian Foreign Ministry Information and Press Department said in a statement.
"We hope the South Korean leaders will thoroughly weigh all possible consequences of such a step, including from the viewpoint of the security in their own country," the document said.
"It is obvious that effectively this is a prospect of further geographic expansion of the U.S. global NMD and its elements now appearing on the South Korean land. Such a scenario will inevitably have a negative effect on the strategic situation in the region, can spark an arms race in northeastern Asia and generate additional complications for the resolution of the nuclear problem of the Korean peninsula," the Foreign Ministry said.
"In a broader sense, this will no doubt have a negative effect on global strategic stability, which continues being undermined by the U.S. unilateral steps to create a global missile shield, and on arms control processes," the statement said.
Full interview of the South Korean ambassador will be posted on www.interfax.ru.
