ID :
186027
Thu, 06/02/2011 - 10:15
Auther :

No confirmation that buried chemicals removed from S. Korea: U.S. commander


(ATTN: UPDATES with U.S. commander's remarks in first three paras; ADDS details, photo in paras 6-9; CHANGES dateline; TRIMS)
CHILGOK, South Korea, June 2 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. military in South Korea does not yet have any confirmation that chemicals, which were buried at a U.S. army base here in the 1970s, were moved out of the country, a U.S. commander said Thursday.
The remark by Lt. Gen. John D. Johnson, commander of the Eighth U.S. Army, contradicted comments made by a South Korean official earlier in the day. According to the official, Johnson told the South's environment minister on Wednesday that the chemicals at Camp Carroll were removed from South Korea.
Johnson made the remark at Camp Carroll as South Korea and the U.S. started a joint on-site investigation into claims by retired American soldiers that they had helped dump large amounts of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in 1978 inside Camp Carroll in Chilgok.
No evidence backing the allegations of Agent Orange burial has been found, but the U.S. military confirmed last week that a "large number" of drums containing pesticides, herbicides and solvents were buried at Camp Carroll in 1978 but were then moved outside the base over the following two years.
Since then, U.S. military officials have tried to determine where the chemicals were moved to and how they were disposed.
Johnson, who is also the lead investigator into the claims, told Environment Minister Yoo Young-sook on Wednesday that the chemicals were moved to outside South Korea, according to Song Jae-yong, a senior ministry official who attended a briefing inside Camp Carroll.
"At the briefing session for Minister Yoo, Johnson said that pollutants were moved to outside South Korea," Song said.
Song said the U.S. military preliminarily confirmed the removal of chemicals to outside of South Korea by interviewing former U.S. soldiers, but no documents supporting the claim have been found.
At Camp Carroll, officials and environmental experts from the two nations monitored a heliport and other areas, with the help of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) devices to determine whether any toxic materials were buried there.



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