SEOUL, Jan 18: The United States has agreed to pull all its troops out of the South Korean capital, raising security concerns as a crisis over North Korean nuclear programmes persists, officials said on Sunday.

Under the deal, which came at talks last week in Hawaii, about 7,000 US troops in Seoul will move to a new base in Pyeongtaek, 70 km south of the capital, by the end of 2007, the defence ministry said.

The agreement, however, has to be approved by South Korea's parliament, which is controlled by opposition parties, it said. A group of 133 conservative lawmakers issued a statement on Sunday opposing the relocation plan and vowed to vote down a related bill in the 273-member National Assembly.

"President Roh Moo-Hyun and his government must take all the responsibility for the security vacuum in metropolitan areas," they said in a statement. The presence of some 37,000 US troops in South Korean has been a source of anti-American protests because a number of them have been implicated in crimes. But conservative groups and opposition politicians have opposed any changes to the strong American military presence and long-standing security ties with the United States.

US troops are seen as deterring North Korea's 1.1 million strong army, and their departure would make Seoul, which is just 50 kilometres from the border with North Korea, more vulnerable to artillery attacks.

Roh said he was unworried about the proposed troop departure, Yonhap news agency reported. "We've done our best (in the just-concluded negotiations) and we should not be concerned about the outcome," Roh was quoted by Yonhap as saying.

Roh recently said: "It is anachronistic to think the United Nations Command should continue to be headquartered in Yongsan." South Korea's chief delegate to the Hawaii meeting, Cha Young-Koo, told Yonhap that US delegates had refused to retain a symbolic number of forces in Seoul.

"After considering various factors, we decided to accept a US proposal to relocate all Yongsan base forces (in Seoul)," Cha was quoted as saying. South Korean military officials said the two sides would hold more talks on key issues such as the cost of a relocation, estimated at more than three billion dollars.

"The relocation cost has not been fixed," Major General Kim Tae-Young told reporters on Sunday, adding South Korea hopes to conclude talks with the United States by October.

Kim said the realignment should not weaken US firepower. Washington believes it can deter North Korea more effectively with long-distance precision firepower.

The agreement includes a delicate plan to relocate a 15,000-member US infantry division which has guarded a key front-line invasion corridor used by North Korean troops during the 1950-53 Korean War.

The agreement in Hawaii came at a critical time in diplomatic moves to end the North Korean nuclear crisis, with Washington and Seoul preparing for a resumption of nuclear talks with Pyongyang.

The first round of six-nation talks among the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia ended inconclusively in Beijing in August last year.-AFP