South Korean and US officials have begun the attention-getting talks ahead of schedule on reducing the US troops level here, a South Korean official said Monday.

The two sides had earlier planned to launch two days of the ninth round of the Future of the Alliance (FOTA) policy initiativetalks in Seoul from Monday on Washington's proposal to realign theUS Forces Korea (USFK), and redeploy its combat units away from the inter-Korean border.

However, after US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense RichardLawless flew to Seoul last Sunday, the US top delegate to the talks soon held a closed-door meeting with South Korean officials later last Sunday, outlining some US proposals, said South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Shin Bong-kil on Monday.

Shin said last Sunday's meeting represented the first round of troop reduction talks but he declined to disclose any details.

Previously, local media quoted South Korean officials as reporting that the United States wants to scale back its 37,000 troops here by a third in accordance with the US new military strategy named Global Defense Posture Review.