South Korea and the United States will start formal discussions next week on a U.S. proposal to slash its troop level in Seoul, an official said Monday.

The talks will take place on June 7-8 in Seoul on the sidelines of a regular military alliance forum, known as the Future of Alliance or FOTA, which the two countries have convened since last year.

"The two countries agreed to begin discussions on realigning U.S. Forces Korea, including its size, on the occasion of this round of FOTA talks," said Kim Sook, director-general of the Foreign Ministry's North American affairs bureau.

Kim said the Seoul government has formed a three-member interagency team for troop reduction negotiations that includes himself, an official from the presidential National Security Council and another from the Defense Ministry.

Their U.S. counterparts will be led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Lawless, who will be arriving in Seoul on Sunday for FOTA talks, Kim said.

According to South Korean officials, Washington proposed in June last year to pull about 12,000 troops, or about one-third of the 37,000-strong military presence, out of South Korea.

However, formal discussions on the proposal have been deferred so far at South Korea's request, officials said.

Seoul insisted on letting people know about the beginning of the talks while Washington refused to do that in an apparent backlash from the sensitivity of the troop withdrawal issue amid heightening tensions in the Korean Peninsula from the North's suspected uranium-based nuclear weapons programs.

The fresh round of nulear crisis erupted in October in 2002 when the Untied States said the North has the uranium-based nuclear program.

Officials said they expect the U.S. to propose a similar level of cuts in the number of troops at next week's talks, as suggested last year.

"We're entering these talks with some basic principles," Kim said, asserting that the proposed troop realignment should not affect the two countries' combined defense capabilities.

The proposed U.S. troop cut has caused concern here as many South Koreans regard the U.S. military in their territory as deterrent against a possible North Korean invasion.

The two Koreas, divided since 1945, are technically at war, with the 1950-53 Korean War ending in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The troop reduction plan is part of Washington's blueprint aimed at restructuring the deployment of its overseas troops to improve their efficiency. The program is known as the Global Defense Posture Review (GPR).

As part of the GPR, the United States announced a decision earlier this month to move 3,600 troops from South Korea for combat duty in Iraq. The relocation is widely believed to be part of a permanent troop cut.

Meanwhile, next week's FOTA meeting, its ninth round, is responsible for working out details on a plan to relocate the U.S. military headquarters out of Seoul and move forward-deployed U.S. military bases to a location farther south.

Leading the South Korean delegation at the FOTA meeting will be Ahn Kwang-chan, former deputy chief of the Korea-U.S. joint military command in Seoul, who was named the new assistant defense minister for policy.

Source: Agencies