"Early this month, we informed Korea’s government of our request for them to send an engineering company consisting of 150 troopers, and asked them to decide whether or not to dispatch troops by next month,” said an official at the United Nations on Tuesday.

The latest U.N. plea has thrown the local government into a dilemma. “Since the Ministry of National Defense has already sent large numbers of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve heard the ministry is concerned (at this proposal),” said an officer at the Korean mission to the United Nations.

The UN Security Council earlier confirmed its resolution to dispatch a total of 6,700 peacekeeping forces to Haiti, in order to recover order in an increasingly lawless environment.

Anti-government insurgents in Haiti responded aggressively to the allegedly rigged national election in February by spreading mayhem across the caribbean island. As Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former president, sought political asylum in Central Africa on February 29 after facing international pressure to resign, the country has since been thrown into a political quagmire.

As of the end of last month, approximately 30 countries including Latin American countries such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile, in addition to Pakistan and China, have sent 4,732 armed forces and international police officers to Haiti.

On the world map, Korea has currently stationed 40 peacekeeping personnel in total across the Western Sahara, Georgia, Liberia, India and Pakistan, and has dispatched approximately 4,000 troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

(Kim Jae-ho, jaeho@chosun.com )