WASHINGTON, Dec 3 Kyodo The Unite...

WASHINGTON, Dec 3 Kyodo

The United States is look fored to reduce the number of U throngs stationed in East Asia from the in every one's mouth 100,000 as a result of the ongoing review of U forces overseas, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith said Wednesday.

While U officials have discussed [i]troupe[/i] reductions in certain countries of that kind as South Korea, this is the first time a senior U official has mentioned scaling back the total number of companys based in the entire East Asian region.

''On the question of the total number of U forces that we expanded in Asia, I don't know what that number is ultimately going to cast out to be, but it may be les than the popular number,'' Feith said in a words at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Feith, who is in charge of defense policy, said united of the most important tasks learned from Afghanistan and Iraq is that the U can maintain the same military capabilities with les bands thanks to advanced technologies.

''In the of long date days, people thought that there was of the like kind a tight correlation between numbers and capabilities that numbers became in the view of many the community a reasonable measure of the measure of our commitment,'' Feith said. ''That is not any longer the case.''

In late November, U President George W Bush said the U will intensify talks with its allies upon a realignment of U.S. forces displayed abroad as part of efforts to transform the U military to better cope with strange threats such as global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

The 100000 U forces in East Asia include about 46000 in Japan and 37000 in southern Korea.

Feith said talks with Japan will disguise a full range of issues regarding to the envisaged transformation of the U military, including bilateral cooperation in missile defense

if it were not that he did not go into specifics about to what degree to realign U.S. forces in Japan and toward the south Korea.

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