KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - President Leonid Kuchma on Monday ordered the foreign and defense ministries to develop a plan for withdrawing Ukraine's troops from Iraq within six months, a day after eight of its soldiers were killed in an explosion at an ammunitions dump.
Ukraine, whose 1,650 troops are the fourth-largest contingent in the U.S.-led military operation in Iraq, previously expressed intentions to withdraw this year, but the order apparently speeds up the timetable.
Sunday's fatal blast in Iraq was reported as an accident, but acting land forces commander Lt.-Gen. Volodymyr Mozharovsky said Monday that investigators were looking into the possibility that it was an attack.
He said witnesses reported seeing a car apparently watching the soldiers shortly before the blast, raising the possibility that the explosion could have been set off by remote control.
In all, 16 Ukrainian soldiers have died in Iraq.
"The situation in Iraq has deteriorated, and as a consequence we lost our men," acting Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency after meeting with Kuchma, adding that the withdrawal could begin as early as March.
Although Kuchma is expected to leave office within days and be replaced by Viktor Yushchenko, whom preliminary results show won last month's presidential election, the change of leadership is unlikely to affect the Iraq policy. Yushchenko has also promised a withdrawal.
His campaign manager, Oleksandr Zinchenko, said Monday that withdrawal was a difficult procedure, burdened with political, financial, military and diplomatic details, but he stressed that the issue would be one of Yushchenko's top concerns.
"I can only say that the promise that ... Yushchenko made to the Ukrainian people would be kept," Interfax quoted him as saying.
The withdrawal could be a significant symbolic blow for Washington, not only because of the Ukrainian contingent's size but because of the country's reputation for eagerly participating in dangerous peacekeeping missions.
Ukraine was a major component of the ill-fated peacekeeping operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992-95, and it has peacekeepers in Sierra Leone. Kuchma recently endorsed sending troops to take part in the U.N. observer mission in the Golan Heights.
Ukraine strongly opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq, but later agreed to send troops in an apparent effort to patch up relations frayed by allegations that Kuchma approved the sale of radar systems and other military equipment to Saddam Hussein's regime in contravention of U.N. sanctions.
http://iraq.headliner.org/headliner.php?c=us&id=226454&abbr=ap
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