Text Fwd: S. Korea seeks to deploy troops in Afghanistan by 2012

Yonhap News
(2nd LD) S. Korea seeks to deploy troops in Afghanistan by 2012
2009/12/02 20:19 KST
By Lee Chi-dong

SEOUL, Dec. 2 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean government wants to send around 350 troops to Afghanistan next July for a two-and-a-half-year mission, officials said Wednesday after their policy coordination meeting with the ruling party.

The decision, which requires the National Assembly's approval, came hours after U.S. President Barack Obama announced a plan to pour 30,000 more soldiers into the war-torn nation, with the aim of starting a pullout in July 2011 to end the increasingly unpopular war.

South Korea said last month that it would operate its own Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan, composed of about 130 civilian aid workers and an unspecified number of troops tasked with protecting them. It would mark South Korea's first military involvement in Afghanistan since it withdrew 200 army medics and engineers in 2007.

The foreign and defense ministries said they would draw up details, including the number of troops to be dispatched, through inter-agency discussions and consultations with NATO.

In the meeting between the government and the Grand National Party (GNP) attended by Vice Defense Minister Chang Soo-man and GNP policy coordinator Hwang Jin-ha, the two sides agreed to submit a motion to the National Assembly calling for the dispatch of 340-350 troops for two-and-a-half years, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It is unusual for the government to push for such a lengthy deployment from the beginning, given the country's practice of sending troops abroad for a year first and then seeking extensions of their mandate. The government did so in maintaining troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Terrorist groups tend to take provocations (against South Koreans) around the time of extending a troop dispatch in a bid to cause a political rift at home," an official who attended the meeting said. "There could be problems in security if troop dispatches to Afghanistan are extended too often." The Taliban kidnapped 23 South Korean missionaries in Afghanistan several months before the end of the South Korean troops' mission there in 2007. Two of them were executed, while the others were freed unharmed. South Korea then pulled out the troops as scheduled without seeking to extend their presence.

It is uncertain whether the plan will get the National Assembly's ratification as the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) opposes sending troops to Afghanistan. The DP's position reflects some public opinion that the ongoing war in Afghanistan is the problem of the U.S., and is irrelevant to a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

In its first official response to Seoul's new troop dispatch plan, meanwhile, North Korea called it "pro-U.S. sycophancy." The Rodong Sinmun, the communist regime's main propaganda newspaper said, "The losing war in Afghanistan has become a pain in the neck for the United States. The South Korean move is nothing but good news that will relieve the U.S. pain."

Earlier in the day, South Korea expressed support for Obama's new strategy in Afghanistan.

"The government supports the U.S. decision to expand its Afghan aid efforts, including troop reinforcements, in a bid to accelerate stabilization and reconstruction there," foreign ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young said in a statement.

Moon said the U.S. move is expected to make huge contributions to efforts by the Afghan people and the international community to aid the war-ravaged nation.

South Korea will continue to join such efforts, he added.

lcd@yna.co.kr