TOKYO, Nov 13 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - In a fresh blow to the United States, Japan said on Thursday, November 13, it would delay sending troops to Iraq until next year, and South Korea agreed to dispatch no more than 3,000 troops to the war-ravaged country, a number far fewer than Washington has requested.

"If the situation allowed our Self-Defense Forces to participate, they could go at any time... Unfortunately, it is not such a situation," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said in press statements carried by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"They may discuss in detail how (Japanese troops) will be received. We need information from various angles," Fakuda said.

Only hours before the attack in Nasiriyah, Tokyo had issued its strongest public message to date that it planned to send troops later this year.

"We are firm in our thinking that we will have a dispatch this year," Fukuda said Wednesday, November 12.

The top government spokesman insisted Thursday "our way of thinking hasn't changed".

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a staunch supporter of the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation, received parliamentary approval last July to send up to 1,000 troops to Iraq.

But the BBC NewsOnline correspondent said that that since then, as the security situation has deteriorated, an already uneasy Japanese public has turned against the policy.

The proposed area of deployment for the Japanese troops was Nasiriyah, the scene of Wednesday's bombing on the Italian forces.

Japan's constitution bans its forces from engaging in offensive operations.

Koizumi’s support for the Iraq invasion also bore the brunt on ballot boxes, with the opposition Democratic Party gained 40 seats after campaigning against the deployment in last week’s general elections.

The delay also came much to the embarrassment of U.S. Defense Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, expected here a few hours later in the day for what he said discussing ways to "adjust our alliance" and about the two countries' cooperation in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Further to Washington’s disappointment, South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun agreed to dispatch no more than 3,000 troops to Iraq.

The United States has reportedly asked South Korea for more than 5,000 combat troops.

Roh instructed his security ministers on Tuesday to prepare for a deployment that "should not exceed 3,000" in size, presidential spokesman Yoon Tae-Young said on Thursday.

Roh agreed on October 18 to a U.S. request to send troops to Iraq but until now has declined to put a figure on the deployment.

The decision was announced three days ahead of Rumsfeld’s visit, on his first trip to South Korea since his appointment as U.S. defense secretary in 2001.

Earlier this week Rumsfeld called on allies to supply "a lot of troops" for duty in Iraq, rocked by increasingly active opposition to U.S.-led occupation forces.

But the U.S. request for additional South Korean troops has split public opinion and triggered pro- and anti-troop dispatch demonstrations in the country.

Roh recently spoke of his personal "agony" in considering the request and has sent two fact-finding missions to Iraq to survey the risks South Korean troops would face.

Rumsfeld will meet with Roh and top officials to discuss the troop dispatch issue and also a year-long standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions, as observers said that the U.S. official would exercise pressures on the head of the country that host 37,000 troops.

Roh instructed to prepare for a deployment that "should not exceed 3,000" in size

Although Washington blames the rising attacks on the former regime’s remnants, feelings of frustrations and deep resentment are rising among ordinary Iraqis jeered by the continued occupation as well as the U.S. military provocations as random shootings and mass detention of innocent civilians.