Updated at 12.49pm:
South
Korean prosecutors will interrogate two American soldiers charged with
negligent homicide by the US army over an accident in which two local
schoolgirls were killed by an armoured vehicle, an official said on
Monday.
The accident in a village near Uijongbu, north of the capital Seoul on
June 13 prompted apologies by United States Forces Korea (USFK) commanders
and anti-US protests by South Koreans who demanded the soldiers be handed
over to local police.
''Prosecutors
summoned the two soldiers to appear in the prosecutors' office by 1pm (HK
time) today,'' the official at the Seoul Prosecutors' office told Reuters.
The USFK said in a statement last week Sergeant Mark Walker and
Sergeant Fernando Nino of the 8th US Army 2nd Infantry division were
charged with ''negligent homicide'' in the deaths of 13-year-old students
Shim Mi-son and Shin Hyo-sun.
Walker was the driver and Nino the track commander of the tank-like
minesweeping vehicle, which ran over the girls on a village road during
training some 30km south of South Korea's heavily fortified border with
communist North Korea.
After Monday's interrogation, South Korea will decide whether to ask
the US to hand over jurisdiction over the two soldiers to the local court,
the official said.
The US maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea in a military presence
designed to deter a repeat of the 1950 invasion by North Korea which
sparked the three-year Korean War.
But pollution, noise and traffic from the US bases and occasional
crimes by American troops have been a source of friction with nearby
communities.
Anti-base activists held the latest of more than hald a dozen protests
on Monday outside Camp Red Cloud in Uijongbu.
The disputes have been seized upon by South Korean political groups and
by North Korea to press demands for a withdrawal of US
troops.
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