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The government has chosen Irbil, located in the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, as the site to which it will dispatch troops in late June.
A high-level government official said Wednesday that the government has tentatively decided that of the two candidate sites -- Sulaimaniyah and Irbil -- Irbil is better suited for the deployment in terms of is security situation, basing considerations, logistics and reconstruction demands. The government took into consideration both the finding from a recent fact finding team sent to Iraq and U.S. requests.
The official said that during a National Security Council meeting -- attended by the foreign, unification and defense ministers -- held Wednesday afternoon, Irbil was selected as the deployment region. A final decision will be made during a meeting of security-related ministries in the middle of next week.
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The Iraq deployment fact-finding team, headed by the Joint Chief of Staff Song Gi-seok (third from left), heads for a police academy after visiting the local government building in Irbil on April 12./Yonhap
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A source said the government had initially considered Sulaimaniyah the stronger candidate, but the fact-finding mission revealed that Irbil had good airports and roads that would make logistics easier. Moreover, there was more demand for reconstruction work in Irbil, so the government slid in that direction. The U.S. military, too, is said to have hoped the Koreans would deploy in Irbil.
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The city landscape of Irbil, one of the potential cities where Korean troops may be dispatched. /Yonhop
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On Tuesday, Defense Minister Cho Young-kil explained to Acting President Goh Kun the advantages and disadvantages of each region based on the results from the fact-finding mission.
Military authorities expect that if a final decision on the region of deployment is handed down in the middle of next week, the unit's equipment and materials -- taken by civilian cargo ships -- could arrive in Kuwait by the middle of next month. Advanced teams could be sent in late May or early June, with the rest of the unit being sent late June.
(Shin Jeong-nok, jrshin@chosun.com )
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