TORONTO — In its strongest move since the sinking of a South Korean warship, the Obama administration said Saturday that the United States would retain control of all military forces in the South during any conflict with North Korea, which has been widely blamed for the attack on the ship in March that killed 46 sailors.
The announcement was an apparent attempt to signal to the North, which has long wanted American forces off the peninsula, that the United States would remain firmly in control of military operations if war were to break out.
The decision is somewhat symbolic; the United States was not slated to give up wartime control of South Korean troops until 2012, and the new agreement extends the deadline to 2015. But the agreement allowed Washington and Seoul to take some action after months of struggling for ways to punish the North — and attempt to deter it from further violence — without provoking the country’s erratic leader, Kim Jong-il, to launch new attacks.
“There have to be consequences for such irresponsible behavior on the international stage,” Mr. Obama said Saturday during a press conference with President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea on the sidelines of an economic summit.
The difficulty of taking action against the North was underscored earlier in the day when the leaders of the world’s largest industrialized economies and Russia — the so-called Group of 8 — condemned the sinking of the South Korean vessel, the Cheonan, without explicitly blaming North Korea. An investigation by South Korea and investigators from several other countries firmly placed responsibility for the attack on North Korea, but neither China nor Russia has embraced that conclusion. China is not part of the G-8, but is a dominant force in the G-20.
The G-8 said in a communiqué, “We support the Republic of Korea in its efforts to seek accountability for the Cheonan incident”.
Mr. Obama also used the press conference to announce that President Hu Jintao of China had accepted an invitation to pay a state visit to the United States. The news came just days after China said it would allow greater flexibility in the value of its currency.
In addition, Mr. Obama vowed to seek Congressional ratification for a long-stalled free-trade agreement with South Korea — a possibly risky political move that could please businesses but upset unions and their allies in Congress.
In an apparent attempt to satisfy those groups, the administration said that in exchange for pushing the trade deal forward, Mr. Obama would ask the South to drop restrictions on auto and beef imports; the restrictions have been particularly unpopular with unions.
The decision to seek approval of the trade agreement was a victory for the White House economic team, and the chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who supported it over the misgivings of Mr. Obama’s political advisers, who worry about angering allies in the months before the critical midterm elections.
Mr. Obama’s aides said they would try to resolve lingering issues by the time of the next G-20 leaders’ talks, to be held in Seoul, South Korea, in November, and present the deal to Congress shortly after the November elections.
President George W. Bush’s administration negotiated the agreement in June 2007, but Congress has not acted on it, nor has the Obama administration pressed the issue until now.
“President Obama’s leadership in breaking down barriers to commerce couldn’t come at a better time,” said Vikram S. Pandit, the chief executive of Citigroup, who leads a coalition of businesses that have urged ratification of the agreement. He said that the agreement “should lead to increased trade and investments, driving growth and job creation to fuel our economic recovery”.
Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he would support ratification as long as “the unscientific barriers Korea has erected against American beef” were removed.
Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said he welcomed the decision. “I hope that this process will provide us an opportunity to address market access for autos and beef and increase the value of the trading relationship,” he said.
