WASHINGTON (Yonhap) _ U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that South Korea should decide itself the details of its troop deployment to Iraq, including the type and number of troops.

``We want Korea to do whatever it believes is right ... That is exactly what we would like. We do not want countries to do things they don’t want to do,’’ Rumsfeld told reporters at the Foreign Press Center ahead of planned trips to Japan and South Korea.

The countries have to look at their own circumstances, he said, ``so we tend not to ask for specific things. We tend to state what the need is and what kinds of things would be helpful.’’

However, Rumsfeld said, ``I would like to see a lot of troops from other countries. I think it is important for other countries to have a commitment to Iraq and to success in Iraq.’’

South Korea’s Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuk earlier said in Seoul that the United States wanted a larger number of forces than the 3,000 troops that Seoul had proposed.

Rumsfeld leaves Wednesday for talks in Japan before going on to South Korea for an annual bilateral defense consultative meeting scheduled for next week.

His visit to Seoul comes in the midst of diplomatic efforts to arrange a new round of six-party talks with North Korea aimed at resolving the standoff over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Rumsfeld declined to comment on the prospects for a second round of discussions on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Meanwhile, he stressed that any reduction in U.S. forces on the Korean peninsula should not be equated with a loss in military strength, noting that the capabilities U.S. forces has soared in recent years.

Washington and Seoul have already reached a broad agreement to realign the 37,000 U.S. soldiers on the peninsula.

``We have not come to any conclusions as to precise numbers of troops or planes or ships or tanks or anything else ... whatever changes may or may not be made at some point ... the military capability of the coalition of the United States and the Republic of Korea will go up, will be stronger, not weaker,’’ he said.

The U.S. military is in South Korea ``solely for the purpose of assuring peace on the peninsula,’’ he stressed. ``The forces have been designed and structured to serve as a deterrent to North Korea.’’