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The U.S. is calling for Korean support in the protracted war in Afghanistan now that president-elect Barack Obama has declared the campaign a top priority.

Obama sees stabilization of the country, over much of which Islamists like the Taleban are expanding their hold, as the key battleground in attempting to defeat terrorists. He is set to dispatch two more brigades to the war-torn country as soon as he is sworn in, a plan which has brought the issue to the top of the security agenda between Korean and the U.S.

A senior U.S. Defense Department official last Saturday told Korean correspondents Seoul needs to make a bigger contribution in Afghanistan. At a session of the bilateral Security Policy Initiative last Friday, the two countries discussed support for what is known as rebuilding and dispatch of trainers for the Afghan army and police.

Since the pullout of Korea’s Dasan engineering unit and the Dongeui medical unit from Afghanistan last year, Seoul has only maintained a 30-man Provincial Reconstruction Team to give Afghans medical and vocational training.

However, in a press briefing on Monday, the Defense Ministry’s international policy bureau director-general Song Bong-heon said, "At the moment, the government's official position is that it has no plan to dispatch troops to Afghanistan."

(englishnews@chosun.com )