The United States and South Korea agreed Friday that Washington will return wartime operational command of South Korean armed forces to Seoul in April 2012, the U.S. Defense Department said.

The agreement was reached during a meeting between U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and South Korean Defense Minister Kim Jang Soo, the department said.

The deal came after the United States, which has proposed returning wartime operational control in 2009, accepted South Korea's request for the transfer in 2012. Seoul has cited the need for more time to become defensively self-reliant.

The current half-century-old arrangement between Washington and Seoul would put South Korean forces under U.S. command should war break out again on the Korean Peninsula.

Under the agreement, South Korea will keep wartime command of its own forces starting on April 17, 2012, with the U.S. military acting in support. The agreement also calls on the transfer to begin in July this year.

The issue of when Seoul will regain wartime operational control of its own forces, a power that under the current arrangement sits with the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea, was a key part of ongoing U.S.- South Korean negotiations on realigning their military alliance.

South Korea put operational control of its armed forces, during both wartime and peacetime, under the U.S.-led U.N. Command shortly after the 1950-1953 Korean War. Peacetime control of its troops was transferred back to the country in 1994.

North and South Korea have remained technically at war since the Korean War ended in a cease-fire. Currently, 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea and the number is due to decrease to 25,000 by the end of 2008.