The National Assembly voted Friday afternoon to pass the Iraq deployment bill. The bill was passed by a vote of 155 in favor to 50 against, with seven abstaining. With this vote, the government can now send 3,000 additional troops to Iraq around April, joining medical and engineering units already there.
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Defense Minister Cho Young-kil thanks National Assembly speaker Park Kwan-yong for the passage of the Iraq deployment bill Friday afternoon at the National Assembly.
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Initially, the Grand National Party (GNP) and Uri Party leaderships planned to support the bill, with the Millenium Democratic Party (MDP) recommending rejection of the bill to its members. The decision to hold an open electronic ballot, however, allowed the representatives to vote freely rather than hold to their party lines.
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The National Assembly approved the bill on dispatching additional troops to Iraq with 155 votes in favor, 50 against and seven abstentions Friday.
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Ahead of the vote, MDP representative Jeong Beom-gu of Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province expressed his opposition to the bill, saying, "It's hard to see a unit composed of special forces, marines, and crack soldiers as a 'Peace Reconstruction Detachment.' He also said that neither the components of the unit nor a budget for the deployment were made clear, nor have legal grounds been presented for the deployment.
MDP representatives unleashed an onslaught upon the Uri Party for its decision to back the Iraq bill, with Rep. Kim Young-hwan talking of "Uri Party-GNP anti-peace cooperation," and Rep. Kim Kyung-jae saying "The Iraq deployment is not about the U.S.-R.O.K. alliance, but the Roh-Bush alliance." (Kim Seong-hyeon, danpa@chosun.com )
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