Slovak election winner says withdrawal from Iraq being readied
"We are preparing a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. I do not think our soldiers have anything to do in Iraq," Fico said, according to the CTK news agency.
"If Slovaks are or are not there, does not change change in the slightest the security situation in Iraq," Fico added, saying that the new government he is expected to head next week might be willing to discuss the possibility of training Iraqi police and soliders in Slovakia.
Fico, whose left-wing Smer party gained 29 percent of the vote in legislative elections on June 17 and won 50 seats in the 150-seat parliament, did not give precise details as to when the forces could be withdrawn.
Fico is expected to conclude a coalition agreement with the nationalist party of former prime minister Vladimir Meciar, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, and the extreme right-wing Slovak National Party on Sunday.
The new government, commanding 85 seats in parliament, should be appointed on Tuesday, Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic said on Friday. Fico is set to be prime minister in the Smer-dominated coalition.
Fico promised during the election campaign to withdraw Slovakia's small contingent in Iraq.
"Our decision is clear and definitive and nothing will change it," he said at the start of June.
Slovakia sent just over 100 soldiers to Iraq in 2003. In 2004, three were killed in an explosion at a munitions depot in Al-Suwayrah, south of Baghdad.
Fico said the deployment was essentially motivated by centre-right Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's desire to please US President George W. Bush.
Smer was outraged at a recent U.S. Senate recent decision to lift visa restrictions on citizens of European Union countries that had provided at least 300 troops to U.S.-led campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"To tell us that 110 (soldiers) is not enough is to spit in our faces in the worst possible way," Robert Kalinak, deputy chairman of the Smer party, said in reaction to the decision.