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The Zaytun division.
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Reinforcements would be under aegis of U.N. peacekeeping mission
The South Korean government is discussing the deployment of troops as part of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFL), with a fact-finding team set to survey the situation there first. An official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on September 29, "At the present stage, we haven’t yet decided on whether to deploy troops or not. The government, however, is going to send a fact-finding team to Lebanon in order to understand the circumstances there and discuss details with the Secretariat of the United Nations, such as the date of the [possible] deployment." Another high-ranking official of the foreign affairs ministry explained, "We are considering the moves of other nations, the local situation, and the necessity of a peace-keeping force." The government initially sent word it would send a fact-finding team there at the beginning of October, but it reportedly is rescheduling the visit to late October at the request of Lebanon.Christopher Hill, the U.S. assistant secretary of state, said at a luncheon at the Washington-based Center for Strategy and International Studies (CSIS) on September 27 that South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, while meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush at the Korea-U.S. summit on September 14, remarked that his nation would send a team to check if there were anything that Korea could do about the Lebanon crisis. Hill said that at the Bush-Roh summit, South Korea and the U.S. discussed Seoul’s promise to maintain Korean troops in Iraq. But Hill later told Korean reporters that the extension of the Korean troop deployment should be decided at the Korean National Assembly. The two leaders did not discuss the matter explicitly, he said. In connection to Hill’s remarks, Yoon Tae-young, Blue House spokesperson, said, "During the Washington summit, there was no discussion on the extension of the Korean force deployment in Iraq. Although President Bush has expressed his appreciation for South Korea’s deploying its troops to Iraq, there was no mention of the matter [of extending the troops’ stay]." The Seoul government has remained undecided whether to extend deployment of the Zaytun Division in Iraq for one more year, according to Yoon.
