August 21, 2003	Thursday	Jumadi-us-Sani 22, 1424

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WASHINGTON, Aug 20: The United States hopes that bombings and violence in Iraq would encourage countries like Pakistan to realize that the people of Iraq need their troops to protect them.

Responding to a question whether the violence could prevent countries like Pakistan from sending their troops to Iraq, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher indicated that Washington would hope it would have a positive impact on such countries.

The deployment of troops, he said, has been a subject of discussion “with a variety of governments, including Pakistan.”

The United States, he said, was “certainly looking for other countries to take some responsibility to help the Iraqi people with security, and that is an ongoing effort.”

“Whether Tuesday’s bombing will affect that or not will probably depend on the decisions of individual countries. Some countries may conclude that the bombing shows that the Iraqi people deserve and need more security and better security, and that they want to participate and help with that,” said the US spokesman.

“We would hope that the countries would do so,” he added. Mr Boucher said that other governments have not yet indicated that they would send their troops if the United Nations endorsed the US request for doing so.