Redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea "is not the way to strengthen" the security alliance between the two countries, a leading American nonproliferation expert said Saturday.
  

Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, emphatically made the point in a statement to Yonhap News Agency, stressing that earlier media reports misquoted him as calling for such a deployment.
  

Sokolski, who served as a nonproliferation official at the Pentagon when the U.S. withdrew nuclear weapons from Korea in the early 1990s, explained at a Heritage Foundation event earlier this week that South Koreans may want tactical nuclear weapons back on their soil, but the U.S. can and should meet what's driving the desire without redeploying such weapons.
  

"The U.S. once deployed such warheads in Korea to demonstrate America's willingness to use nuclear arms to defend South Korea if necessary. Koreans naturally want U.S. and South Korean security ties to remain as tight as they were when the U.S. deployed these warheads in Korea," he said in the statement.
  

With advances in military science since l990, however, there now are "much safer ways to maintain America's nuclear guarantee without employing actual warheads on Korean soil," Sokolski stressed.
  

"That's why I argued and believe that despite a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report that recommends again deploying U.S. nuclear warheads in Korea, doing this is not the way to strengthen U.S.-ROK security ties," he said.
  

He was referring to a CSIS report that was published last week and proposed the U.S. place tactical nuclear weapons back in South Korea to better cope with the ever-growing nuclear capabilities of the communist North.
  

Some hard-line conservatives have called for such a deployment whenever North Korea has made provocative acts, such as nuclear and missile tests. But officials of the U.S. and South Korea have flatly rejected such calls.
  

Sokolski also said that he recently made a visit to Seoul, and Korean officials he spoke with "never said that they want to acquire tactical nuclear weapons." (Yonhap)