The South Korean government says the potential deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system is not on the agenda at talks this weekend between the defense chiefs of the two allies.
The South Korean defense ministry was forced to issue a denial after US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said he expected the issue of the THAAD deployment to come up during his meeting Saturday with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo.
Following North Korea's ballistic missile launch last February, the two allies announced that they would officially enter negotiations for the deployment of the defense system that can counter the growing missile threats posed by the Korean Peninsula.
Meanwhile, a number of UN member states have submitted their plans for implementing the latest Security Council resolution on North Korea.
South Korea, the US, the UK, Japan, Russia, and Monaco are among the ten nations that have submitted implementation plans for UNSC Resolution 2270, imposed on North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests earlier this year.
The 193 UN member states were to submit reports on how they would follow through with the toughest ever sanctions on Pyongyang, within 90 days of the resolution's adoption.
The US left North Korea out from its latest list of states sponsoring terrorism.
The State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 said the North "is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the Korean Air bombing in 1987".
The North was first put on the list in 1988 for the airliner bombing that killed 115 people aboard but was removed from the blacklist in exchange for denuclearization talks in 2008.
Source: Arirang News
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