SEOUL (AFP) - The South Korean government is to seek approval from the country's parliament to extend the deployment of South Korean troops in Iraq by a year, news reports said.
The defense ministry decided last week to extend the mission which was originally due to expire at the end of the year, Yonhap news agency said.
The cabinet will will ask parliament to allow up to 3,600 South Korean troops to stay in Arbil, a Kurdish-controlled town in northern Iraq, Yonhap said.
When asked about the report, defence ministry spokesman Shin Geoung-Ja said: "We can neither confirm nor deny it."
But an unnamed ministry source told Yonhap the mission of the South Korean troops should be extended because it had been delayed for a long time by controversy over the original deployment.
"If the parliament fails to approve the extension of the mission ... the South Korean troops would have to return home without having completed their job in Iraq," said the source.
In February, the South Korean parliament approved the dispatch of up to 3,600 troops on a non-combat mission for relief and rehabilitation in Iraq until December 31 in 2004.
But the dispatch was delayed for months against a background of growing anti-war protests and it was only in late September that South Korea completed the deployment of 2,800 troops in Arbil.
The mission is to be reinforced by another 800 troops in November, just a month before the mission is formally to expire.
The South Korean government attempt to impose a tough media blackout on the deployment, citing the security reasons following the execution of a South Korean translator by Islamic militants in Iraq in June.