Future of US troops in South Korea part of talks with North Korea: Mattis
Tehran (KNA) - US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says the future of American troops deployed to South Korea will be determined during negotiations with North Korea, as the leaders of the South and North made history after they attended a highly anticipated summit in a bid to put aside decades of enmity between the two peninsular countries.
"I think for right now we just have to go along with the process, have the negotiations and not try to make preconditions or presumptions about how it is going to go. The diplomats are going to have to go to work now," Mattis told journalists at a Friday press conference when asked about the future of US troops in South Korea.
Mattis' comments came less than a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, following a highly choreographed summit, signed a joint declaration, dubbed, "the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification on the Korean Peninsula", which could lead to the complete denuclearization of the peninsula.
During their first summit in more than a decade, the two leaders also stated that they would seek an agreement to establish "permanent" and "solid" peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Source: PressTV