TOKYO, 20 October 2003 — Japanese politicians were locked in a heated debate on Sunday over whether to send troops to violent and lawless Iraq — a key policy issue that could affect the outcome of a Nov. 9 general election.
A new and threatening tape purportedly from Osama Bin Laden reinforced the need for Japan to contribute to security in Iraq, ruling party politicians and government officials argued. Another justification for the proposed deployment was last week’s adoption of a UN resolution aimed at getting troops and cash for Iraq, they said.
Fukushiro Nukaga, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, confirmed earlier media reports by saying Japan was likely to send an advance team of troops to Iraq later this year to lay the ground work for the full-scale dispatch.
Japan’s government pushed a bill through Parliament in July allowing the dispatch of troops on a non-combat mission. “The law is designed to help Iraqi people to establish their own government,” Nukaga said on NHK public television.
Japan’s military is constrained by the country’s pacifist constitution.
The mass-circulation Yomiuri Shimbun daily said Tokyo planned to send three C-130 transport planes and 150 troops to Kuwait in December to airlift supplies to US-led forces in Iraq.
The main group of 550 troops would also be sent to Iraq early next year to provide Iraqis and US and British forces with logistical support, including supplying water, electric power and medical aid, Yomiuri said, quoting unidentified Japanese government sources. Most voters opposed the Iraq war and many are wary about sending Japan’s troops, known as the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), to a country where US forces face attack almost daily.
“Japan relies on the Middle East for 90 percent of its oil imports. Who is protecting the sealanes? That is done by the Japan-US alliance,” Nukaga said. “Stability in the region serves our national interests and ensures stable supplies of oil.”
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who supported the US-led war on Iraq, faces the difficult task of trying to satisfy Japan’s key security ally, the United States, while avoiding upsetting a wary Japanese public ahead of the general election.
Yukio Edano, policy chief of Japan’s main opposition Democratic Party, said Japan should not send its troops to Iraq before Iraqis formed a provisional government.
“The US and British forces are occupying Iraq now and backing up the occupation forces means that Japan takes part in the war,” Edano said. “The Self-Defense Forces personnel should go to Iraq on a mission bound by a neutral role,” he said.
The communists and socialists oppose any plans to send Japanese troops, none of whom have fired a shot in combat since Japan’s World War II defeat in 1945.
Japan announced on Wednesday that it would provide $1.5 billion in grants in the near term to help rebuild Iraq. Japanese media have said the aid package would eventually reach $5 billion over four years.
“We must not foot the bill for America’s occupation policy,” said Edano.
Some Japanese politicians voiced fear that Tokyo’s staunch backing for the US-led war on terror could make Japan a target of attacks.
Meanwhile, South Korean police yesterday arrested eight activists as anti-war groups protested the government’s decision to send more troops to Iraq.
The eight students were arrested for holding an unauthorized demonstration in front of the presidential Blue House, as civic groups held an anti-war rally nearby. “Drop the decision to send troops to the massacre and invasion war!” one student activist shouted as he was detained by riot police.
Just a few blocks away, demonstrators from an association of 351 civic groups issued a statement that they would campaign against Roh, who has proposed holding a national vote of confidence in his leadership around Dec. 15.
“President Roh Moo-hyun’s decision to send more troops is ... an unpardonable betrayal of the public trust ... and a confession of submission to the unilateral US militarism,” the statement said. “In whatever form the vote of confidence takes, we will ask him to take responsibility for his irreversible and historic policy failure.”
Seoul, shifting from its cautious approach toward the US request for South Korean combatants in Iraq, announced Saturday that it would send more troops to Iraq following a UN resolution approving multinational forces.
