(RTTNews) -  Wednesday, the topmost military commanders of U.S. and South Korea agreed to strengthen defenses against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats in the wake of the communist nation's recent short-range missile tests and reports of its resuming the nuclear program, South Korean officials said.

The agreement was reached at a Military Committee Meeting (MCM) between Lee Sang Eui, chairman of South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff and his U.S. counterpart Admiral Michael Mullen, the office of Lee said.

The agreement hours after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated that the threat being posed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as North Korea is officially known, was becoming "more lethal and destabilizing" than ever before and that the Washington would never accept Pyongyang possessing atomic weapons.

During their annual security talks, the two sides assessed North Korea's military threats, including its nuclear and missile programs, as also a broad range of issues concerning their alliance, besides ways to strengthen their joint defense posture, a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman said.
The two sides also agreed to work out "strategic plans early to specify expanded U.S. deterrence" against nuclear threats, he added.

The MCM is to be followed by the high-level Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) scheduled for Thursday between visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Tae-young.

The U.S. has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea to bolster the latter's 655,000-strong armed forces as a deterrent to the North's 1.2 million-member military--a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty. The U.S. also guarantees a "nuclear umbrella" over its long-time ally in case of an atomic attack.

by RTT Staff Writer

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