By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter

South Korea’s military survey team, which returned home on Monday after a 10-day trip to Iraq, said both Sulaimaniyah and Irbil are far safer than other Iraqi regions for the 3,000 troops to be deployed for rehabilitation missions.

The team also said the regions have much demand for outside assistance with reconstruction and the people of the two northern Iraqi towns have expressed their support for the scheduled troop dispatch by South Korea.

``We can’t say which of the two we prefer right now. Both Sulaimaniyah and Irbil have respective merits and demerits as deployment sites,’’ Maj. Gen. Song Ki-seok, who headed the mission, said during a press briefing. ``The dispatch location will be decided in the National Security Council (NSC) meeting on Thursday.

``We met leaders of both Sulaimaniyah and Irbil,’’ Song told reporters. ``We had sufficient talks and, based on those, held consultations with the United States.’’

A Defense Ministry official said on condition of anonymity that the military prefers Sulaimaniyah, which is the safer of the two Kurdish autonomous regions. Other officials said the NSC would take largely the ministry’s opinion into consideration.

Seoul had planned to deploy the 3,000 additional troops in the northern Iraqi town of Kirkuk, on top of the 450 medics and engineers already in Iraq, under an independent operational command.

The plan, however, was called off due to a U.S. demand for ``joint offensive operations’’ in the region, which Seoul refused to comply with. U.S. officials later proposed Sulaimaniyah and Irbil as candidates for new deployment sites, and Seoul officials responded that they would choose between the two.

Public concerns over the troop dispatch grew after nine Korean nationals were briefly taken hostage by Iraqi militias amid worsening security situations there. All were later released unharmed.

The troop dispatch plan is unpopular among South Korean citizens. Some say the dispatch will solidify the traditional Seoul-Washington alliance, while others argue the U.S.-led war is unjustified.

A recent poll among newly elected members of the 17th National Assembly show that nearly half of them believe a second thought should be given to the troop dispatch issue due to the changed security situations.

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr