The deaths of two Republic of Korea (ROK) men in an ambush in Iraq divided the ROK government over the Iraq-bound troop dispatch issue, although it insisted on Monday the incident will not affect Seoul's decision to send some more of its military troops there.  

In the ambush near Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, two South Korean men working for the ROK Omu Electric Co were killed by unidentified gunmen on Sunday. They are the first South Korean casualties in Iraq since the US-led Iraq War began in March 2003.

The attack shocked the Seoul government, which convened several meetings in the day to discuss the security situation in the Middle East country and the proposed dispatch of more South Korean troops to Iraq.

"There are no changes in our plan to send troops to Iraq," ROK Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, ROK National Security Advisor Ra Jong-il also stated that Seoul will not let the attack affect the troop dispatch plan.

In April and May, Seoul sent hundreds of engineers and medical personnel to Iraq. And in October, Seoul again accepted US demands to send an additional large number of troops to Iraq.

However, due to the sensitivity of the issue, the Seoul government has not yet decided the exact number, nature, date of dispatch, deployment location of the proposed troops.

According to reports, the ROK Government mulled sending just 3,000 troops with an independent commander.

ROK and Washington reportedly had differences over the issue. The United States wants Seoul to dispatch a larger mission to Iraq, with most of them being armed soldiers. But Seoul is likely to send combined troops composed of both combatants and non-combatants to Iraq because of a prevalent civil anti-war mood at home. And Seoul prefers to send these troops around April of next year, later than the United States expected.

The deaths of the two South Koreans have made local people more divided over the issue. More and more legislators took negative stances over the troop dispatch, although all the political parties held cautious stands on the issue.

Some lawmakers think to dispatch ROK troops under the current situation is not proper, and the ROK military will be targets of attacks there.

Chang Young-dal, chairman of the National Assembly Defence Committee, emphasized the troops dispatch should be postponed because of the ambush.

Kim Young-hwan of the Millennium Democratic Party stressed the need to reconsider the troops dispatch plan. The other legislators supporting the troop-sending plan urged the government to make clear whether the attack was accidental or intentional.

Lawmaker Cho Woong-kyu, who led a parliamentary fact-finding mission in Iraq last month, said, "We need to cautiously deal with the matter, but we should not change our original position."

While the parliamentary mission was in Iraq last month, a rocket hit the hotel where it stayed in Baghdad, but fortunately with no casualties.

A series of attacks against foreigners has aroused grave concern among local people. Just before the ambush on the South Koreans in Iraq, seven Spanish intelligence officers and two Japanese diplomats were killed last Saturday.

And since Seoul made its decision to send additional troops to Iraq, anti-war sentiments have increased locally.

In an Internet poll taken by the online portal Naver, 56.6 percent of 3,423 respondents urged the government to rethink the plan.

(China Daily December 3, 2003)