Kazakhstan will keep its contingent of some 30 servicemen in Iraq as long as there are no serious casualties, a government source said on Friday.
The source said Kazakhstan could rotate the contingent with fresh troops after May.
"If there are no serious incidents like casualties in the Kazakh contingent, a new Kazakh force may be sent to Iraq when the current term expires in late May," a government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Kazakh Defence Minister Mukhtar Altynbayev said earlier this week Kazakhstan would pull its troops out of Iraq when the term of its present contingent ends. The government said on Friday foreign governments had asked for clarification.
"The government of the Republic of Kazakhstan calls on the military command of the international coalition to provide proper safety for Kazakh servicemen," the government said in a statement.
"Further deployment of Kazakhstan's military contingent in Iraq will depend upon this. The government declares that for the time being it has no intention of withdrawing its military contingent from Iraq."
Kazakh servicemen, most of them engineers, have suffered no casualties in fighting between forces of the US-led coalition and followers of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
But several prominent members of parliament have demanded the pullout of Kazakh troops from Iraq after a soldier from another ex-Soviet state, Ukraine, died and several others were wounded in fierce fighting in the Iraqi town of Kut this week.
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