http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010323/ts/korea_usa_dc_1.html

SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States asked for South Korea's support for its controversial missile shield but Seoul said it was maintaining a neutral position on the issue, Foreign Minister Lee Joung-binn said on Friday.

``During the consultations to prepare for the Korea-U.S. summit, the United States asked us to agree to their plan to promote the National Missile Defense System (NMD),创 Lee told a policy forum hosted by the Korea Press Foundation.

``We disagreed, however, and the White House later announced it had not made any request or that South Korea had expressed it support,创 Lee was quoted as saying by the Korea Herald in its early Saturday edition.

The South Korean foreign minister visited Washington last month to prepare for President Kim Dae-jung's talks with U.S. President George W. Bush on March 8. That is when the request for support was apparently made.

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters during the Kim visit that Washington did not ask for South Korea's support for the missile shield.

South Korea's position on the multi-billion dollar U.S. missile shield, designed to protect the United States and its allies from a terrorist attack by ``rogue nations创 such as North Korea, has been ambivalent.

Seoul appeared to side with Russia in opposing the shield when the two countries issued a joint declaration during a February visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin, which said the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty was ``a cornerstone of strategic stability.创

The Cold War era treaty outlaws missile defenses such as the one the Bush administration is proposing.

The foreign ministry later clarified that its support for the ABM treaty did not translate into opposition to the NMD.

Strong Opposition

The deputy spokesman for the foreign press at the foreign ministry, Kim Euy-taek, said the foreign minister did not intend to convey any opposition to the missile shield plan.

``Our position is that it磗 inappropriate to discuss it at this time,创 he told Reuters. China and Russia strongly oppose the U.S. missile defense plan and their support is crucial to President Kim Dae-jung's drive to improve ties with erstwhile enemy North Korea.

Bush told Kim during their talks in Washington that he backed Seoul's ``sunshine policy创 of engagement with North Korea but his administration was skeptical about the North and had no immediate plans to resume talks with the secretive, totalitarian state.

North Korea is livid about being identified as one of the justifications for a U.S. missile defense and has been launching daily diatribes against the ``U.S. imperialists创 since the Kim-Bush meeting earlier this month.

North Korea stunned its neighbors in August 1998 by test-firing a medium-range missile that soared over Japan before splashing into the Pacific. U.S. defense analysts say Pyongyang is the world's leading exporter of ballistic missile technology.

The United States has some 37,000 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. That conflict ended in an armed truce instead of a peace agreement that has since left the two Koreas in a state of war.