The decision to send a US Defence Department team was taken by President George W. Bush during an unscheduled meeting he had with Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani in Washington last week.

This followed some reservations the Indian side had expressed on sending troops, who may have to work under American command. The Cabinet Committee on Security has already met twice and considered the issue but did not take a decision.

The team, which arrives here Sunday night, will be led by Assistance Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs Peter Rodman and will comprise representatives from the Defence and State Departments.

The US President, who had dropped by when Advani was holding talks with National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, said that the Pentagon team would hold talks to address whatever reservations India had on contributing its troops to the US-led efforts to stabilize Iraq.

Advani had told reporters then that Bush decided to send the team when he told him that the India's Cabinet Committee on Security had discussed the issue twice and needed some clarifications.

US Ambassador here Robert Blackwill has said Indian troops in Iraq would operate under their own flag and not be used for combat purposes.

He, however, told a group of reporters Saturday if India declines US request for deployment of its troops in Iraq, it will not "damage" bilateral ties.

Blackwill also said that the United States wanted Indian troops as they were highly professional and experienced in peacekeeping operations and that a decision to send them to Iraq would be a "positive" one.

Meanwhile, a possible deployment of Indian troops as part of a "stabilization force" in Iraq is threatening to become a first rate political controversy in the country.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is scheduled to have a dialogue with the Congress president and Leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi, Sunday.

However, authoritative sources within the Vajpayee establishment assert that no decision has yet been taken and probably no decision would be taken without a reasonable political consensus i.e. the consent/concurrence of the principal Opposition party, Congress.

The "no-decision-yet" view was reaffirmed publicly by Defence Minister, George Fernandes Saturday, who asserted that there was no decision as of now whether or not India should respond to the American suggestion.

The Congress is opposed to the deployment of Indian troops under any command other than that of the United Nations in Iraq.

Senior leaders formulating the party's position on the issue ahead of Sunday's meeting between Prime Minister Vajpayee and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, maintained that there would be no change from the position taken in Gandhi's June 4 letter to the Prime Minister.

In the letter, she had made it clear that the Congress would be "totally opposed to the deployment of Indian troops under any arrangement other than a UN command or as a part of the multinational peacekeeping force that has the mandate of the UN."

(Xinhua News Agency June 16, 2003)