US & Korea Will Soon Begin War Reserve Negotiations
How come I have a feeling this will explode into another one of those, “the yankees are trying to screw us” issues?:
South Korean and U.S. officials are expected to open negotiations later this year on Washington’s proposal to sell its war reserve stockpiles to Seoul, the U.S. command here said Friday.
The U.S. has stockpiled about 600,000 tons of ammunition in South Korea since the 1970s for use in the event of a conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
Last December, U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law a bill aimed at selling the war reserves to South Korea as part of a sweeping reshuffle of its overseas military installations.
So why do I think this may become an issue of contention? This is why:
A possible sticking point in the negotiations would be the selling price of the reserve stockpiles.
The U.S. side hopes the combat items would be sold at a “fair market value,” while South Korean officials want to obtain them for free or purchase only part of the total, arguing that about one third of the U.S. items are too old and in need of repair.
“Fair Market Value” and agreements with the South Korean government means nothing. The US had an agreement with South Korea over the Camp Humphreys expansion and that has been delayed due to the governments wavering on annexing the land which has in turn delayed the overall agreement of consolidating the USFK camps, most notably Yongsan Garrision in Seoul, all south of the Han River.
Then the latest issue causing contention is the agreement with the US that the South Koreans would take the vacated 2ID camps “as is”. So what the Korean government did to break this agreement was to send in the leftist environmental wackos; who of course claimed the camps are super polluted and uninhabitable even though US soldiers having been living on the camps for 50 years with no problems. So of course the Korean government is demanding money for the “clean up” even though they agreed beforehand to taking the camps “as is”.
So if anyone thinks selling the issue war stockpiles to the Koreans will be a smooth process are kidding themselves. If the Korean government doesn’t get the deal they want, expect to see the environmental wackos sent in.
