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SEOUL, Feb 19 (AFP) - South Korea imposed a major security clampdown in Seoul and on the frontier with North Korea ahead of the arrival Tuesday of President George W. Bush for a visit to be dominated by North Korea and its weapons programme.

Some 15,000 riot police were deployed across Seoul, with all military and police anti-terrorism units put on alert for Bush's three day stay, officials said.

US and South Korean army units, backed by surveillance aircraft, also stepped up monitoring of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), which divides the Korean peninsula, military authorities said.

But groups -- including radical students, pacifists and Buddhist monks -- opposed to the US president and his North Korea policy vowed to defy the security cordon.

Police commandos threw ropes down the side of a skyscraper on Monday to storm the American Chamber of Commerce office in the Seoul business district after it was occupied by 28 students for three hours.

One pro-US group also said it would hold daily demonstrations in support of Bush and his tough line with North Korea for three days outside the Yongsan military headquarters for the 37,000 US troops in South Korea.

Bush is to arrive from Tokyo at the Seoul military air base at 4:35pm (0735 GMT).

On Wednesday morning, Bush and South Korea's President Kim Dae-Jung will hold a summit to discuss how to convince the communist North to end its missile sales and resume steps to reconcile with the rival South.

The two leaders will go later to the DMZ on the border with North Korea where they are to make speeches urging the North to withdraw their huge forces away from the tense frontier.

Bush angered the Pyongyang regime last month by saying it was part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq. "North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens," declared the US leader.

But South Korea is worried that Bush's hardline may have undermined Kim's four years of attempts to peacefully engage the North with his "Sunshine Policy."

Bush has insisted he supports the South Korean leader's peace efforts but has also stuck to his hardline with the North over its military threat.

"We want to resolve all issues peacefully, whether it be Iraq, Iran or North Korea," Bush said Monday in Tokyo, but he reaffirmed: "I will keep all options on the table."

In a speech to the Japanese parliament on Tuesday, the US leader said he wanted to defuse tensions on the Korean peninsula.

"We seek a region in which demilitarized zones and missile batteries no longer separate people with a common heritage, and a common future," Bush declared.

North Korea's state media was unusual silent in the hours before Bush's visit.

In recent weeks it has kept up a virtually daily propaganda onslaught against the US leader, calling him the head of "an empire of evil" and the "the most bellicose and heinous" US president, whose visit to the South is only intended to "fan up war hysteria."

Bush will leave South Korea for China on Thursday. 

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